Super Clutz

Yes, that should be a “k” there. Auto-correct knows it. I know it now, but I didn’t until after I made the cape, and someone asked about it. This is indeed embarrassing for a four-time school spelling champion. I guess there’s a reason I never made it past district. If I had developed the character I would have corrected the spelling, but for right now I’m just letting all my foolishness hang out, in the hopes that it’s good for my soul.

It all started at Five Oaks during Spirit Week. I always participated in Spirit Week, dressing up every day, but also not ever going really elaborate with the costumes. That time, there was a super hero day. I could have gone with an existing superhero of some kind, but I did not have any costumes like that, and sometimes I get weird ideas, so it occurred to me to locate my super self, and that was someone who was pretty awkward but got the job done.

My costume was simple, but someone who was super only in her clumsiness would not have a really sleek costume. It was definitely a white t-shirt with no logo, paired with blue shorts (I think), and then my cape was a red towel with felt cut out letters along the bottom that gave the name. Obviously despite the homemade nature it was legible, or no one would have noticed the spelling error.

That really just was the one day, but she did take hold of my brain. Still influenced by Wonder Woman, she transformed by spinning around, but in her case she would often fall out of the spin, or at least get dizzy, and the time she changed in a bathroom stall she ended up wrapped in toilet paper, which she broke through easily because she was strong and could fly. (I do not remember the origin of her powers, but it might have been aliens, like the Greatest American Hero.)

Again, she did get the job done. She foiled a bank robbery by crashing it, literally, but whether the robbers got knocked out by the swinging door due to a flight gone wrong or through an intentional “bonk”, it’s still foiled, right?

So you would think. In fact, the other heroes in the local Justice League-type organization found her to be an embarrassment, especially the elegant, sophisticated female one, and forbade her from using her powers or practicing as a hero, or they would send her through the trans-dimensional portal.

Well, that was all well and good until a particularly effective super-villain took all of the competent superheroes out of commission, and there was no one else left. Super Clutz went in and saved the day, and then, knowing she had broken the rules, went through the trans-dimensional portal on her own.

Meanwhile, her love interest had figured out her secret identity, and after giving all of the competent heroes a piece of his mind for even creating a situation where she would feel like she needed to go through the portal, regardless of whether they would have been jerks enough to enforce it after she saved them all, went in after her.

Unfortunately, the trans-dimensional portal is not completely consistent in its destination selection, initially placing them both in separate dimensions. One was very Hoth-like.

I didn’t actually ever come up with a resolution for the whole situation, but my thought was that all of the heroes were going to work together, initially encountering obstacles in many different dimensions, but overcoming them and learning valuable lessons about devaluing others by the time they eventually reunited. Perhaps it was too complicated for me to develop it much beyond that point.

There is a footnote to this. Years later I was watching Saturday Night Live. The guest host was Catherine O’Hara, making it 1991 or 1992. In one of the sketches, she was a superhero being called up in front of her league. Her offenses included flying upright instead of prone (it reduces cape welts!) and when she confiscated guns from criminals, using them to shoot the criminals rather than crushing them into little metal wads. Well what do you expect from a league with members like Sissy Boy and Calcium Man? (And why can I never find SNL skits online?)

It was not all a loss though. She defended herself, and Zombie Man agreed with her. They did not win the support of their fellow heroes, but they flew off together in the upright position. Preach it sister! I know exactly how you feel.