A few years ago, we cleaned out the garage because it was so full of “stuff,” we couldn’t even park a car in there.

For a while, all was well. When the weather got cold, I parked the car in the garage and never had to scrape the windshield; it was great. We lived like. . . other people!

Then, our son moved from his large apartment into a studio apartment.

I can no longer park my car in the garage because it’s full of tables, chairs, lamps. . . . things that don’t fit in a studio apartment, but that are still nice furniture that he wants to keep for when he finishes school and moves back into a real apartment or house. Added to all of Zappa’s stuff is more of his father’s; Hub is a pack rat and tends to accumulate things. He will try to tell you that a lot of it is mine but that just isn’t true.

Besides enough furniture to start a store, we have most of the usual garage-type things in our garage: cans of oil and gasoline, shovels, hoes, picks, garden hoses, file cabinets we haven’t looked into for years, tools, a freezer, did I mention our son’s stored furniture and boxes, and comic books.

One wall is solid comic books.

Some of them – the Marvels – are Hub’s. The DC’s are mine.

I especially loved the Legion of Super-Heroes, and I bet most of you have never heard of that.

As you know, I’m no spring chicken, and by this stage even my dreams should have calmed down and become mature and stuff, but I’m still waiting. If I see that stage coming at me ahead of time, I’ll try to jump on it, but I’m making no promises. I’ve seen some of the people riding on that stage and I want no part of it; they look pretty boring to me.

I loved my DC comic books, and I still love them. I don’t love DC comic books NOW – I haven’t loved or bought any since they fired all the good artists and hired a lot of guys who can’t color inside the lines or write a coherent story line – that would be since the early seventies, I’m guessing – but back when the artists were good and the writers were great, I never missed an issue.

And what do I sometimes dream about at night? On the good nights, that is?

I dream about Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy and Triplicate Girl and Braniac 5 and Mon-el and Phantom Girl and Shrinking Violet and Light Lass and Invisible Kid and Colossal Boy and Star Boy and Sun Boy and Ultra Boy and Dream Girl and Element Lad and Chameleon Boy and – dumbest hero ever – Bouncing Boy. And all the others.

And when I dream about them, I’m one of them. I’d tell you my name and describe my costume, but I fear I’ve already said too much.

I’m just an old lady woman, after all.