Welcome To the Twenty First Century

I Dreamed I Was Superman In My Maidenform Undershirt I had a curious dream the other night, which recurs from time to time. I dreamed that I was a reporter on the Toronto Daily Planet and my name was Clark Kent. Well, that wasn't really my name; actually, my name was Superman. I came from the planet Krypton, see, and I had super-vision, super-strength, super-everything. Instead of underwear, I wore a natty Superman suit in blue and scarlet under my normal threads. I was dedicated to fighting crime in the Big City. Whenever I heard of a mastermind controlling the underworld I would tear off my clothes in an alley or a phone booth and dash off into the sky crying "This is a job for Superman!" But if you read the comic books you know all about this anyway. Well, in this dream it was a busy Tuesday morning on the Daily Planet. In my role as Clark Kent I had just turned in a three-paragraph story dealing with flower arrangement classes at the museum. My next assignment was the upcoming TTC meeting to decide on the new chairman of the transportation commission. I had my hat and overcoat on when my eye happened to catch the duplicate copy of an item turned in by my beautiful colleague, Lois Lane of the women's department. The story read as follows: A master criminal of incredible cunning and avarice appears to be the Mr. Big behind the bootlegging of thousands of pounds of coloured "spread" into local grocery stores, police said today. It is believed that all of gangland is held in thralldom to this fiend incarnate whose infiltration of the butter market here is said to be one of the most callous criminal acts in history. Thousands and thousands of farmers, unable to sell their butter, are destitute as the result of the machinations of this monster whose product, tinted a deceptive yellow, is selling for as little as fifty-two cents a pound. It is believed that the gangland king has thousands of housewives in his employ colouring by hand pound after pound of brand-name margarine, which is then repackaged and bootlegged to the trade. Police admit they are baffled in this case. "It will take superhuman powers to bring this devil to justice," Inspector J. Harvey Grebe told the Daily Planet. Fortunately, there is a private alley behind the Daily Planet, used mainly by delivery trucks. I slipped down at once, removing my overcoat, scarf and hat and piling them in an obscure corner. Then I took off my newly tailored three-piece Ivy League suit, folded it neatly and placed it on top of the overcoat. I removed shirt, tie, tie clip, cufflinks, socks and shoes and laid them in the alley, too. Then, costumed as the Man of Steel, I headed for Roncesvalles and a small grocery store with a mighty bound. It was here that my super-senses told me I would find the key to the riddle. The trouble was I kept worrying about my suit back there in the alley. It had started to rain and I wondered how I would look covering the TTC all rumpled and muddy. The TTC! I had forgotten my assignment, and the deadline for the Three Star Edition was only minutes away! I bounded back into the alley, leaped into my sodden clothes, assumed the role of Clark Kent and took the subway to Davisville, just in time. I phoned the story in to rewrite and then searched about for some place to change my clothes again so I could reassume my role of Superman. First, I went down to the Bi-Way and bought some of those folding coat hangers that travellers find so useful; also a clothes brush and whisk. I then searched about for an obscure telephone booth since I recalled, in my dream, that Superman in the comic books was always removing his clothing in obscure telephone booths when he was not using unfrequented alleyways. I first stepped into one of the phone booths in the Park Plaza Hotel, but this proved impossible. A lineupPierre Berton is the author of 'Welcome To the Twenty First Century' with ISBN 9780385258180 and ISBN 0385258186.