I kind of want to meet this girl. She sounds amazing!

I kind of want to meet this girl. She sounds amazing!



Originally shared by John Baez

Making yourself into a superhero

I enjoyed this true story by Kelly McEvers:

We met in a bar in Flagstaff, Arizona. I'd just moved back from Cambodia and I was going out for one of my first beers back in the States. Not long into the first one, I notice this Amazon of a woman with huge blond and red-streaked hair and frosty lips, wearing a short red tank dress and at least 50 bracelets. She's six feet tall and showing a lot of leg. People at the bar swivel their heads to watch her every move.

She stands next to me to order a drink, and in this throaty voice says, "What are those?" pointing to my cigarettes. I tell her they're Cambodian. Her eyes light up and she shoots out a long, tan arm, and points at a table in the corner. She orders me there. Before I can say no, I'm following her to my seat.

She tells me she's an international private investigator, a bounty hunter, and a bail bonds enforcer, and that her name is Zora. I sit there for hours listening to her. Within a week, she takes me to Las Vegas. We drive there in her red Mustang. As always, there's a Colt .380 under the driver's seat and a .45 Megastar in the trunk.

In Vegas, we skip the casinos and head straight for the male strip clubs, where Zora drops at least $200 on lap dances from buff guys with names like Roman. Her getup is the same as before – teeth, hair, jewelry, and the ubiquitous tank dress, which, I realize, is the best way to show off her tattoos.

One is this big circle with blue and white swirls in it, kind of like a bowling ball, on her left shoulder. Every guy she meets asks her about it, and when they hear her answer, they sometimes propose marriage. Turns out the tattoo is a magic globe she holds in her dreams. And in these dreams, it gives her superpowers.

Zora: Ever since I remember, I've had the dreams. And they're very vivid. But it varies. It usually involves fighting, sometimes with guns, sometimes with superhero powers. Lightning from my fists and all that. And I usually have super strength, and I can fly, and I have all those things.

And it's my most common set of dreams. And it varies. Sometimes it's medieval, sometimes it's futuristic, sometimes it's present day, sometimes it's like a guerrilla war in Latin America.

Kelly: Can you describe that Zora to me, the Zora in dreams?

Zora: Very powerful athletically, but beyond the rules of nature that this world allows.  Six foot five and long, like almost impossibly long silver hair. This sort of otherworldly quality to her, where her voice did not sound normal. It sounded, like, almost musical.

And it became something that I aspired to be. I aspired to be this sort of superhero, this sort of person who would fight for a cause. That was my motivation in life. Ever since I was 10 or 11, I decided that that was my goal.

Zora took the dreams seriously. So seriously that at the age of 12, she sat down and composed a list of some 30 skills she needed to learn if she wanted to become as close to a superhero as any mortal could be. She even gave herself a deadline – to master these skills by the time she was 23.

Zora: I don't know what's in these.

Zora pulls out the old spiral notebook that was her diary at the age of 13 and turns to the inside back cover.

Zora: There's the list.

Kelly: Wow. Why don't you go ahead and read it.

Zora: OK. The list included martial arts, electronics, chemistry, metaphysics, hang gliding, helicopter and airplane flying, parachuting, mountain climbing, survival....

Throughout her teens and 20s, each time she started a new diary, she would update the list and write it in the back of the book, each one with the same format, each one titled "The List."

Zora: Weaponry, rafting, scuba diving, herbology – yes, I, studied that -- CPR, first aid and mountain emergency kind of medicine....

The list also includes bodybuilding, archery, demolitions, and explosives. She wanted to learn how to hunt animals and track men.

Zora: Major physical conditioning....

And the most incredible thing about all of this is that Zora accomplished nearly every item on the list.

Zora: Throwing stars and compound bows and throwing knives and -- yes, it was a very interesting pastime.

To keep up with the goals set by the list, she sped through school. Starting in the seventh grade, she began completing entire school years during the summer term and finished high school by the time she was 15. She got her BA at 18, a master's at 20, and completed the coursework for a PhD in Geopolitics by the time she was 21. She wanted to live like Indiana Jones, spending half her time in the classroom and half her time saving the world in the jungles of Peru.

Zora: Item number four – camel, elephant riding. Evasive driving and stunts....

When you're a kid, you have these romantic visions of what you'll be when you grow up. But how many people are so diligent they commit their dreams to paper and make it their life's work to achieve them? How many keep a list, amending it, adding to it, ticking things off as they go along, well into their adult lives?

After finishing the course work for her PhD, Zora decided to quit school, disappointed at the lack of cliff-hanging adventure in her doctoral program. And since superheroes who live in the real world need jobs, she decided to seek employment at the only place that would allow her to put all the skills from the list to use. Zora wanted to become an agent in the CIA.

But then the story takes some interesting twists!  Listen to it here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/508/superpowers-2013?act=2#play

The picture here is, of course, not Zora.  It's Charlize Theron playing  'Aeon Flux' - a kind of superhero invented by a high school friend of mine, the animator Peter Chung.