Pipe Cleaners and Superheroes

When I was a child, I drew a picture that was featured in our local newspaper called “Jumping into Recycling”. Our community had just started to get on board with the idea (it was the late 1980’s or early 1990’s). I was at home drawing a random doodle of a policeman falling into a pit of alligators and my mom brought it to the now defunct newspaper. They saw an opportunity to turn my policeman falling into a boobytrap into a public service announcement.

But that’s what it’s all about, right? Public service and community involvement. It’s about sharing your gifts and talents to make the world a better place.

My son has always been fascinated with Superheroes. When he was a toddler, I made him a green cape out of a blanket and a green mask out of construction paper, and he transformed into a “Captain Green”. He excitedly collected cans and bottles and brought them to the curb while in disguise.

On another occasion he made flowers out of pipe cleaners and wrote cards that said, “We’re glad you are our neighbor”. He hand-delivered them himself. One neighbor was so touched he was moved to tears.

Also, as a toddler he stuffed all of his change in an envelope to give it to an unhoused person we frequently passed on the road.

And then there was that Halloween where he dressed as Batman and wanted to go to the house adjacent to ours. The house with the furniture on the porch and the unkempt lawn. The man who rented the house was so flattered to have a visitor that he dumped his whole bowl of candy in my son's trick-or-treat bag. No one paid much attention to this man, including us. Upon leaving his seemingly uninviting front porch my baby boy blew him kisses.

In the moment it was just funny, later it was endearing, and now it feels deeply meaningful. Should we not all be more like this?

He was too young to recognize his own gifts but not too young to remind me of the way. Community involvement. Neighborly love. Kindness and goodwill and all of those things that didn’t require prompting when we were kids. They came naturally to him, but so often they are lost on me.

It’s about pipe cleaners and superheroes, being unreserved and not hiding our light under a bowl.

Let it shine, for the good of the community. Be the neighborhood superhero.