Captain Vibro

Heroes

Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash

Lightning struck an old wood telephone pole on our way to meet Captain Vibro.

I was nine, and I thought that meant something. I wasn’t sure what, but something.

Captain Vibro was appearing at Calumet Comics.

Calumet Comics was two hours from our house, give or take. I didn’t think I was gonna get to meet Captain Vibro unless Captain Vibro himself picked me up and flew me to see Captain Vibro, but my mom was Miss Apple Harvest, Miss Bingham County Water Slide, and a bunch of other weird stuff I overheard men say about her at the bowling alley.

L.T. Blackhill was tryin’ his best to be my fourth dad or Mr. Bingham County Water Slide or something, so he offered to drive to Calumet Comics so I could meet Captain Vibro.

My first dad, my biological father, was supposed to have died from the Vietnam War. That’s what my grandparents always said: “Arlen died from the Vietnam War.”

Years later I found out his friends gave him alcohol poisoning the night before he was supposed to ship out and he died before he got there.

My mom married Buck when I was too young to remember, but I’ve seen a few pictures.

Buck went to prison, and apparently liked his cellmate a little too much, so my mom divorced him and married David, messing up my fifth and sixth year of life and the alphabetical string of husbands she had going. 

David divorced my mom because she disapproved of him spitting on me and because he thought she was sleeping with L.T. Blackhill.

Looking back at it logically, she probably hadn’t slept with L.T. yet, because if he had already slept with her, he probably wouldn’t have gassed up his VW van to take me all the way to Calumet Comics.

The ad in the Bingham County Bellringer had a picture of Captain Vibro, played by Matthew Lillingkatz.

At nine, I wasn’t exactly sure how Matthew Lillingkatz was the alter ego of Dale Koyle, who became Captain Vibro when he activated the Vibrawand in his top-secret briefcase.