last word
84
I
had no interest in having laser surgery on my eyes until I
saw Cyclops in that
X-Men
movie. Now I’m saving up: I
just want to be able to melt statues at a distance.
Yes, stuff that used to be just true in comics and
books written for the youth market is now part of real life.
Case in point: In the UK recently, a group of children
were at a party when they saw two men running into
nearby woods, and minutes later, a police helicopter
looking for them. The children threw themselves on
the ground in the shape of a giant arrow, showing the
helicopter pilot which way to go. Cops caught the bad
guys and said the children’s action “was the sort of
thing you would usually associate with an Enid Blyton
adventure”, referring to a popular children’s book author.
Life is increasingly imitating youth literature, which
is intriguing. I mean, we’ve always assumed that
radioactivity kills you — but there must be cases in
Reality
versus
fiction
Real life is increasingly like books for teens or tweens,
writes father-of-three
Nury Vittachi
.
which it gives you exaggerated abilities, like Spider-
Man, Daredevil, etc, right? Was Donald Trump bitten by
a radioactive Rottweiler? Were Chinese stock market
investors bitten by radioactive lemmings?
In comics and kids’ books, bad people often get
redeemed. True story: police checking a surveillance
video in China saw a young man snatching a bag and
running at record-breaking speed down the road. They
caught him and said they would recommend him to a
sports institute to train as an Olympic athlete. The moral
of this story is that you should commit crimes to get rich
and famous.
On the downside, the most common opening of
classic comic books and novels is for the main character
(Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Superman, Batman, etc) to
dramatically lose his parents. Thankfully that doesn’t
happen much in real life — although it did happen in
Pattaya, Thailand, where a woman gave birth while
roaring through town on a motorbike. Bikes being noisy,
bumpy things, new mama didn’t notice and zoomed
off over the horizon in a cloud of dust. Luckily people in
the bus behind spotted the baby and saved it, the local
newspaper said. That kid is going to have a great first line
for his book: “I left home at an early age, when I was 0.3
of a second old.”
Of course, one can use the new trend for evil. For
example, a resident of Tehran in Iran announced that he
was a wizard and took US$500 from a man in exchange
for an invisibility spell. The buyer marched into the local
bank and started snatching money from people’s hands.
He was astonished when angry customers wrestled him
to the ground. He told police HE was the victim. “A big
trick was played on me,” he said.
I have no sympathy for the guy. I mean, you have to do
the scientific research first, right? So before I get the laser
surgery done, I plan to read as many copies of
X-Men
as
I can. My colleague points out that these are “just comic
books”, but I told him that he has to respect my beliefs.
He can be first on my list of targets to zap.
Nury welcomes your comments and ideas at his
Facebook page:
