Someone's Hero

It’s one of those nights where time is slow. Where my eyes are tired, but my mind is buzzing. I have to get up for work in the morning, though if anything, that just makes me more reluctant to sleep. The living room is dark for all but the lonely glow of the television. I pull my blanket around me and settle in. I’m kidding myself if I think I’m going anywhere but the fridge anytime soon.

I’m watching some sort of documentary about whether the titanic was haunted – or was it whether the chef was from outer space? All this late-night television bleeds into itself now. I didn’t put this show on, it just followed the last rubbish I was watching. We’ve just come back from the commercial break, and the narrator is recapping again what has happened in the last three segments of the show. By the time he’s done we will almost be at the next break.

I fumble my hand over the couch, my eyes still glued to the screen. I feel the cat next to me, she meows sharply at the disturbance, then purrs over the attention. I reach down the side of my seat. I imagine all range of horrors which probably (hopefully) aren’t lurking down there: old food, huge spiders, a ghoulish hand waiting to grab mine. I shudder.

To huge relief, I feel the remote and pull it to safety.

I flick past some worthy candidates. I almost settle on a clip show of funny cat videos, but I’m feeling a little too sombre for that tonight. Scenes flash past on my screen and nothing excites me. But then I see a face that makes my heart curl up. The familiar sludge of guilt whirls in my stomach. I go back to the channel, Phantasmo at 75, the show is called.

It has everything: the loud music, angled shots, dramatic narration. I’ve seen so many exactly like this.

A group of teens giggle on screen as they are asked about their hero. They all wear his signature purple mask and antennas. Perhaps they are in line for one of his meet and greets.

‘Which of Phantasmo’s powers is your favourite?’ asks a well-groomed man with a luminous white smile. He looks at the camera, not his interviewees, when he asks his questions. It’s a little unnerving.

‘Oh, definitely flying,’ one boy shrieks. His friend shakes her head,

‘No way!’ she says, ‘It has to be the telekinesis.’

I remember kids used to talk about this at school. I would play clueless and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know that much about him.’ From a young age I understood how important it was to keep his identity secret.

But had I of answered this question when I was very little, I would have told you it was his ability to clean off a plate of food. Whenever we would go to that all you can eat place, ‘Billy’s’ I think it was called, he’d always finish off my food when I (once again) had piled my plate a little too high.

It was the same act every Saturday. I’d begin to slow on my chewing, those extra few potatoes closing in. Then, I’d sigh loudly and lean back in my chair.

‘I’m full,’ I would say, pushing the plate slightly towards my dad.

‘Well, it looks like it’s dad to the rescue,’ he’d say as his hand swooped for the plate. As he did, he would always, without fail, joke: ‘I’m such a hero.’ And I would giggle away. It was the funniest joke in the world.

On the best evenings, he would move my plate towards him with his mind. My mum would always shoot him a deathly look for that. Although I have grown to understand her fear, at the time it was all hilarious.

The TV cuts to commercial and I am left with my thoughts. He’s probably asleep right now, no good calling. But that’s what I always think, isn’t it? Always a reason. An excuse. All he’s done for you and you can’t even pick up a phone once a week.

I go to the kitchen to get some tea. Or maybe a beer? I smile at the can (and it smiles back I swear). No, it’s a work night, I think to myself at this late hour, as if I’m responsible.

Eventually I hear the shouty voice of the show’s narrator and abandon my plan of letting the tea brew. I carry my rushed beverage with a biscuit sticking out of my mouth. I cocoon myself back in my blanket.

The documentary is now covering the television series from the early 80s. It was called: Phantasmo to the rescue. I wince as I know my dad would. Phantasmo was written as a bland fighting machine, with corny catchphrases instead of a personality. The reviews were terrible.

After the show ratings plummeted, me and my mum found a range of Phantasmo to the rescue birthday cards on sale. We bought enough to embarrass my dad for ten birthdays. Each year, I would write one of the TV-Phantasmo’s terrible catchphrases under Happy Birthday, much to my dad’s…delight.

It wasn’t until dad moved to the home and we sorted his desk out that I discovered he had lovingly kept every one of them in a box in his drawer.

The cat edges closer to me and curls into my blanket. The traffic hums outside. The show I’m watching chugs along.

One thing I can’t stand about these documentaries is the celebrity interviews. Every one of them claiming that they are oh so close to Phantasmo, they know him like no one else does apparently. It’s funny though, because the recurring faces I see on these shows are people that he never mentioned.

But I knew the real Phantasmo. He’s the man who spent a whole afternoon reading through lines with me when I auditioned for the school play. He’s the man who made up that jingle about the aeroplane called Andy when I was scared to fly for my school trip. He’s the man who, when the love of my life left, drove for three hours with beer and nachos and then stayed with me for three months to make sure I would be okay. The nachos were cold when he got there, and we laughed about his choice in snack food for such a long journey.

My hero.

He’s also the man who I left in a place he didn’t know, albeit a nice one. The man who I told – no, promised, that I would call every week. The man I haven’t spoken to in 6 months. Who I can’t call now because how could I ever explain why I broke that promise?

I switch off the TV and sit in darkness.

The next day my phone stares at me intently: In the bathroom, on the bus, at work. I’m so tired when my alarm goes off in the morning and by evening my eyes are tired but my mind is buzzing.

I sit alone in the dim room, the television murmurs in the background. My remote control and my phone lay in waiting beside me. A fork in the road. I stare at them both for a long while.

My hand hovers over the devices, so many excuses roll around my head.

I pick up my phone.

I pull up the number I have never yet called. My finger hesitates over the green button. It trembles. My heart beats at a super sonic speed. I breath in deeply.

“Hey dad, how are you?”