I’ve always loved walking. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to walk for miles. Sometimes, this was just aimless drunken walkabouts that often ended in trouble and hooliganism. Other times, especially at night, it was simply just a way to pass the time that didn’t cost money and afforded us a chance to talk at length, as we were wont to do.
I remember one summer night, staying over at my buddy Jason’s house, we went out for a 10-mile hike to a neighboring town. Both being comic book lovers and a touch delusional, we spent that trek talking about wanting to be vigilantes. And not the Bernhard Goetz kind, because that was sort of pedestrian, but more along the lines of Batman or Rorshach. Masked, disturbed individuals willing to fight crime at great cost to ourselves.
And it wasn’t just a laugh-off—we treated the topic as serious as a heart attack, discussing the very real considerations. What kind of costumes we would wear, and how could we fix them if they got shredded in combat or stinky falling three stories into a dumpster. What kind of weapons we could construct that would somehow be emblematic and strike fear into the hearts of criminals, and still perfectly functional (which was tricky, since neither of us took shop class or were especially handy with tools). What kind of communications systems we’d need to be able to get the heads up on crimes in progress and still beat police to the scene. Ten miles, we hashed questions like these out, which, given that we were middle-class and had no wealthy relatives about to croak and leave us the dough to finance our vigilante careers, required some nimble thinking. (more…)
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