Batman and Robin

“Leigh’s headline story for the year was setting a new record at her school for the most points scored in a single girls’ basketball game. The local paper published the following Tuesday showed her at the basket doing a layup. We bought extra copies feeling like we had a local celebrity living in the house.”

- Greetings from Vale Hollow, Christmas 1966

Well, durn. Leigh had temporarily become a local celebrity with an awesome basketball performance. I wanted to be a celebrity too --- like Batman. I’d seen him a couple of months earlier at one of those big car shows in Nashville when he showed up with his tricked-out Batmobile.

All of us kids at Harbison Elementary were hooked on watching the latest adventures of Batman and Robin shown on TV at 7:30 every Wednesday night. At the end of every 20 minute episode, Batman and Robin left the audience hanging in suspense wondering if they would survive the latest death puzzle traps set by one of their arch nemeses like the Penguin, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, or the Joker. What dire straits would

challenge them this week? Roasting under the concentrated rays of a huge magnifying glass? Being eaten alive by a giant clam? Or untimely death from suffocation under the sands of an enormous hourglass in which they were trapped? We just loved it!

Catwoman was an enemy, but she wasn’t really a villain in the eyes of Lewis and me. She was mysterious, sexy, and somehow scary like all girls, especially older more fully developed ones I’d see around. We boys had crushes on her but knew she couldn’t be trusted. Lewis and I wondered if that just made her a typical girl. We'd have to get a lot

older to figure that one out.

One morning our teacher, Mrs. Brooks, left our second grade classroom unattended for a short spell, minding us all to behave while she was out. Rampant whispering started almost immediately upon her exit. In no time whatsoever the teacherless class grew bolder

and moved into full throated conversations with seat mates stationed nearby. Lewis, sitting next to me, decided to be a little naughty, and I followed his lead.

A sudden urge came upon us to act out the roles of Batman and Robin in a kind of slapstick Keystone Cops style. Lewis as Batman and me as Robin. To do it right, we had to act and get up out of our chairs. With wide, excited eyes I shouted out, “Holy Dick and Jane, Batman, the Joker is raiding the playground. We’ve got to stop him!”

“Right Robin,” cried Batman Lewis. “I’ll go that way,” he said pointing past my shoulder, and nodding, I responded by pointing past his shoulder, “And, I’ll go that way Batman!” So then we fake ran with all our might and stupidly smashed into each other, immediately crashing to the floor.

Erupting in peals of tittering laughter from our right were three girls — Debbie, Stephanie, and Bonnie. From the floor Lewis and I grinned, intoxicated by the adrenaline rush of affirmation. Those girls’ siren song of laughter drove us ever onward. “Do it again! Do it again!” they cried out, and for Lewis and me, “No” was not an option.

We leaped up from the floor right on cue, and I, pointing out the window towards the playground, exclaimed, “Holy “See-Spot-Run” Batman, the Joker is trying to kidnap Spot! Run Spot Run!” Batman Lewis commanded, “That’s right Robin, we have to stop

our arch villain. I’ll run that way to the Batmobile,” he said pointing over my shoulder, “while you run the other way to cut him off,” pointing behind himself. “Pronto Tonto Batman!” I shouted. And again we lunged forward, our chests bouncing against each other driving us down to the floor with a furious BOOM! POW! CRASH! Again, our trio of female sirens swooned with rapturous, alluring peals of laughter interspersed with the

driving chorus, “Do It Again! Do It Again! Oh, Batman and Robin please Do It Again…”

And oh yes, of course, we would do it again. Superhero masculinity dictated that we must. Not just for the three, but for them all! We’d now captured the attention of more and more classmates. Our audience was building. I could see it now. We would become second grade celebrities worthy of Christmas newsletter renown! We had lassoed a piece

of 1966 pop culture making it our own. We were becoming the class kings! This was just the beginning of Lewis and Liam, a superhero combo, forever powerful, forever inseparable.

Intent on executing our grand finale, we doubled the space between us to almost 20 feet. The next Batman and Robin crash would be greater than ever before, like two mad mountain goats crashing into one another to see which one would drive the other off the cliff. And that crash, oh my lord, the crash when we hit the floor would be nothing short of stupendous. Stupendous, but for ….., eyes widened, “Holy nightmare, Batman!” I silently mouthed to Lewis.

“Whose making all that noise?” Mrs. Holland bellowed from the classroom door. Oh no, Mrs. Holland. Her 5 foot 4 inch middle-aged cylindrical frame just added substance to her piercing eyes of anger, and thin-lipped authority. The entire class shushed into immediate submission. Apparently while Lewis and I had been in performance, Mrs.

Holland’s class was sitting quietly in the room below us — the school library. Oops, didn’t think of that one. “Tell me right now who is making all that noise!” she demanded.

Bonnie, Debbie, and Stephanie turned in unison with their accusing fingers pointing at the dynamic duo who now in terror looked like they’d just taken a blast from Mr. Freeze. “It’s Liam and Lewis, Mrs. Holland. It’s Liam and Lewis who are making all the noise!” Those shape shifting females shattered us into a million pieces against the rocks. Oh unkind dream crash. Mrs. Holland’s withering gaze of queenly authority had instantly transformed the mesmerizing sirens into harpies who betrayed us.

Punishment was meted out by Mrs. Brooks once Mrs. Holland, acting as judge and jury, convicted us. While the rest of the class was dismissed for recess, Mrs. Brooks instructed Lewis and me to each start at opposite ends of the long hallway and walk back and forth from one end to the other twenty-five times. If the bald, bespectacled Principal

Sheldon happened to see us and ask us what we were doing, we were to tell him how we had disturbed Mrs. Holland’s class during their library time.

In 1966 corporal punishment reigned in rural Tennessee schools. No offense was too small. We knew if we were caught by Principal Sheldon, we would feel the sting of Old Hickory - that long weathered, wooden paddle hanging by a rawhide cord in his office. Principal Sheldon was an avid golfer, who loved getting extra practice by swinging Old Hickory. The key question was ’What stroke was he working on today?’ to best determine just how severe the sting would be. Word had it that he was practicing his opening drive. Not good.

So Lewis and I got started, walking as fast as we could without being accused of running in the halls, which of course would be another paddling offense. When we finished going twenty rounds through, we knew we’d likely make it past the next five without Principal Sheldon catching us. During those last five laps, sensing our escape from surefire paddle retribution, Lewis and I passed one another with huge shit-eatin’

grins on our faces. Speed walking got burned into my psyche that day, and now whenever my wife Tori and I take walks in the woods or along the beach, my pace is invariably quicker. She calls me ‘Trotter’ as if I were some kind of Tennessee Walking Horse hyped up on steroids. Nope. I keep speeding ahead because I’m still subconsciously fleeing Old Hickory, always with a grin on my face.

“Batman and Robin” is excerpted from Tim Duning’s recently released book Lawton Passage wherein the truth of growing up rarely fits neatly inside a Christmas newsletter.