I, Superhero!! :. Mike McMullen
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all kindsa food—”
“It’s not gonna ruin out here, is it?”
“No, everything’s snap top,” Geist assures her. “On the back of my card are numbers of some places locally that can help—”
“I’m from Arkansas.”
“Okay. Well, you got the Interfaith Hospitality Network, the Salvation Army—”
“Yeah.”
“—social services, stuff like that—”
“I’m supposed to go back Monday.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah. Hey, and you know what? Read the scriptures…. I’m askin’, I’m not stealin’. Know what I’m sayin’? People come by here and laugh, and I think, ‘I wish they’d pray instead of laugh, but you know—’”
“Well, I wish you the best of luck. And look at those numbers on back,” Geist says, and we start to make our exit/escape.
“You look cool,” Gerty says, calling after Geist.
“Thank you!”
“You do too!” she adds, talking to me.
“Thank you!”
“I think you need orange like him!”
“Like him?” I ask, pointing to Geist and wondering if she has some rare form of color blindness.
“Yeah, but orange!”
“Oh, Okay!”
“You don’t have a rubber band do you?” she yells. We’re at the corner, and I’m mashing the crosswalk button somewhat desperately.
“No, ma’am!” I call back.
“Thank you for the stuff!” she yells as the walk light begins to flash. Geist and I quickly cross the street and get into his car.
“That was kinda cool,” I say, and as I say it, I realize I’m being sincere. Despite almost getting into a never-ending conversation about the scriptural significance of rubber bands, it felt pretty good to help somebody out.
11:25 A.M.—CHILDREN’S HOME
The local children’s home is the kind of generic red brick and white-trimmed building that has become synonymous with suburban critical care. We park, Geist grabs his comics and a photo album full of Pokémon cards, and as we reach the building, a grandfatherly man in jeans and a T-shirt buzzes us in.
“Hi!” the old man says, seemingly taking no notice of Geist’s appearance. “How are you?”
“Good!” Geist says, “Have we met before?”
“No!”
(Insert the Spiel here.)
“Oh, wow!” the old man says.
“—and” Geist nods at me—” he’s an author, he’s writing about me—”
“Oh! Okay!”
I’m finding myself starting to respect the old man’s apparent lack of fazeability.
“—and we’re going around and trying to do something good.”
“Oh, okay! There’s nothing wrong with that!”
“That’s what we think! And today I’ve got some comics and some Pokémon cards for the kids.”
“That’s good! Let me fill out a slip here for you. Just put your name down there, and—”
“Well, I have a secret identity.”
“Oh! Well, then you don’t have to.”
“Well, I can do what I can,” Geist says, and he proceeds to try to fill out the donation card without giving actual information. While he’s doing that, a pair of Hispanic boys walks by staring. They spend the next few minutes standing in the background, pointing at us and talking in Spanish. The only words I understand are “superhero” and “cowboy.”
“What do you do, just follow him around?” the volunteer asks me while Geist erases God knows what on his card and starts over.
“Yep.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“We were able to give some food to the homeless earlier,” I say.
“Oh, that’s great! You’re having a good day, then.”
“We got more planned,” Geist adds, as he turns in the card and indicates that we’re done here.
“Thank you!” the old man says.
“Thank you,” Geist says.
On the way back to his car, I get a text from my wife. She’s asking if the strange man I met over the Internet and then drove fifteen hours to spend the day with has hacked me to pieces yet.
As I’m responding, I hear “Hi! I’m a real-life superhero!” and look up. Geist is waving to some kids riding by on bikes. I soon learn that he introduces himself to anyone who makes eye contact, to anyone who drives, walks, or skates by and to anyone he thinks may or may not be within the sound of his voice.
Back on the road, Geist tells me our next stop is a lemonade stand some local children have set up to raise money to support the troops. I decide to take advantage of the drive time to actually ask some questions.
“So, did you become well known overnight, or was it a gradual thing?”
“Gradual, but a lot quicker than I figured. I mean, for a while we were just a bunch of nuts on the Internet sharing experiences, and then it starts to get legitimized. In my blog, I’m real up front about how I haven’t found any criminals. I haven’t come across any crime. I’m lookin’, I’m prepared. I set out on missions to do charitable stuff, and if that’s all I end up doing in the end, I still feel good. ’Cause I do worry about people who are just out looking for trouble, because it’s gotta be demoralizing, because you go out and most of your patrols are going to be washouts. I’m sure that’s one reason why so many heroes come and go. That’s why if you throw in a charitable mission, you’ve got something. It doesn’t demoralize you. It’s not like, ‘That was a waste of time.’”
“So, you’ve never actually stopped a crime in process? Or even accidentally happened upon one?”
“No, not yet. But I’m looking. For instance, there was a person of interest that I was looking for in this area. He was a Level Three sex offender who was released from nearby here and was seen following women around in this area. Then there was a daylight rape on a bike path of a 15-year-old girl and the description in the newspaper was really vague. It was ‘heavy set and wearing blue.’ White, black, beard, clean shaven, I don’t know. Um, but when I saw this guy’s mug shot like a month later, like in a grassroots-circulated e-mail, I went, ‘Well, he’s heavyset, he’s a Level Three sex offender…’ What if, you know? And so I was thinking maybe he was the guy. And actually, the cops picked him up—he was the guy. So I kinda felt gratified that I’d been looking for the right guy.”
“So it’s not like you can just go out at night and see crime after crime being committed—”
“Not at all, and that’s the frustrating part. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and how do you do that? How do you know who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy just by looking at them?”
“Good point,” I say. “I mean, how many people, in their entire lives, see more than maybe one or two crimes as they happen? In their entire lives?”
“Exactly! That’s why you can’t just fight crime. I mean, some of these guys do, and they say they’ve stopped a bunch of stuff, but I just don’t know.”
“So,