My brother came into town last night. While driving back and forth from our sister’s place, we talked about all kinds of stuff. I was telling him about the article I wrote about superheroes and whatnot the other day and talking about how Batman/Wolverine was my favorite character. And he was saying that his was Spider Man (who I only ever liked when he had that black alien symbiote costume - because that freaking ruled), and we were talking about why we liked those ones, and what made us drawn to these characters and what they did for us and stuff. And my brother pointed out how my dad always bought comics that my brother didn’t like. One of my dad’s big characters is Conan the Barbarian (who I liked in a way, but I only ever really loved when he was “Conan the King” because then he had a lot of shit to sort through, instead of just wandering around). And my dad always bought those Star Trek/Star Wars titles. And then we were talking about how my mom is really into the kind of fantasy novels that are really kind of floaty and psychological (to us anyway) like Ursula LeGuin, and Anne McCaffrey - and then I was connecting that to my mom’s seeming fascination with the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Anyway, right. Another revelation that we had last night was about how our dad kind of displays some of the classic traits of the “absent-minded professor” type character, and I was thinking that if my family was upper middle class, instead of lower middle class, that’s probably a very accurate picture of how they are, and the kind of dynamic my parents have as people. I was also thinking about how if they had more money, and a different kind of background if maybe my dad would have been like a philosophy or english literature professor. Its kind of a funny thing to consider.