The elements of life weren’t always plotting against me. I remember the days of boyhood. I did not have a single care in the world. I attended kindergarten and elementary in a big Chinese school of 8 sections per batch. There were large lawns surrounding our school-building within the campus walls. The population was so big they had to divide recess sessions into 2 batches of four classes to ensure order in canteens. But the kids did not go to the cafeteria. A throng of bustling boys would run into the grass fields to play games that involved all sorts of running.

I made sure I led them. I was the fastest runner in our block and in our batch. I would fly through the lawns with my arms stretched sideways while others looked to me with admiration for my speed and grace. I was like a gazelle springing from here to there to everywhere. Sometimes I would even compete with my friends in the higher levels and still emerge winner. And if I am not running in the fields I am running in one of the long halls being chased by a ticked-off female classmate that’s off to have a grab at my hair. She will pull and tug up until she gets satisfied. All because I was a pest.

I’ll be running for my life like a regular fly, and, in case, I get caught, it doesn’t matter. To simply know and to feel the anger you create pestering someone is to know the meaning of the Life for a fly. Despite the hand with a vice-like grip clenched at your hair, dragging you down the stairs, it still makes your head swell. Maybe the fly experiences swelling too before it goes splat under the fly swat. What probably makes it explode is the swelling of the head, just like me. Only my body constitution has evolved a tougher epidermis preventing the explosion. Scientist ought to look into this. Lunch and dismissal time weren’t any different. The tutoring sessions I had, and needed, daily, during these periods never prevented me from playing with my friends.

That’s why by the time came for our school bus to go home all everyone in the bus hated me. I had the effect of rotten sweat socks hung on the gratings of an electric fan, after 3 hours of exercise, with out foot powder. I sweat so hard, after the hour it took for us to get home I was still sweating. Who cares? All my friends believed my legs ran faster than motor vehicles. Some even thought they ran on gasoline. But for me, I had my eyes set for the skies. I had a thing for flight. To fly was my dream, my number one prayer item at night. I envied everything that flew, from the great eagle to the pestering fly, so long as it could still fly. No reason for admiration staring at a fly gone splat! Flying was the taste of my sweat.

I watched Superman part 1 to 4. I whistled and sung its tune while pretending to fly. Everything was related to flying. I wanted to swim because I thought swimming mimics the form of one who flew. I ran because I believed as I ran I flew. Just as impossible it is to catch a bird in flight, so was it impossible for my classmates to catch me when playing tag, so was it impossible to catch me when at the peak of my day-dreaming. Everything that flew was invincible and always noble. Today, my friends still call me Superman. They sing the Superman tune when a piece of cloth accidentally gets attached to my back. And they know I would appreciate Smallville and Smallville related gifts.

To me there are no distinctions between the two. The other is only a higher form of the other. Sooner or later, I’d be able to fly myself, as a Superman.