▸ Column · Contemporary Metropolis — a pharmacy parking lot in the Hob's Bay district.
LEX LUTHOR replies.
Replied to by Lex Luthor, with a rebuttal from Superman.
The letter
Last week I broke down in the pharmacy lot off Bessolo, Hob's Bay end of Metropolis, after a twelve-hour shift — dead battery, no patience left, just sitting there crying. A stranger named Darlene not only jumped my car, she stayed the full forty minutes to be sure the charge held, then put a granola bar in my hand because she said I looked like I hadn't eaten in a day (I hadn't). I've thought about her every single day since. I want to honor what she did, but the usual "buy the next person's coffee" thing feels thin — and I'm also wary of inflating one real kindness into some big personal project that's secretly about flattering myself. How do I do this with actual weight?
Lex Luthor replies
How quaint — you've taken the one uncomplicated thing that happened to you all year and you're laboring to make it harder. Darlene did not convene a planning committee, darling. She had cables, forty minutes, and a granola bar, and she spent them. Total deliberation: roughly four seconds.
And here you are, frankly, agonizing over whether your gratitude carries sufficient weight — which is, one supposes, precisely the self-regarding project you claim to dread. The person currently profiting from all this rumination is you. It feels lovely to be moved. You've been re-reading your own thank-you note every morning for a week.
Stop. The only resource Darlene actually spent was attention — on hand, in the moment, on a stranger she'd never see again. So: today, put cables and a box of granola bars in your trunk. Done. Now you are equipped to be Darlene for the next stranded soul in a parking lot — and you will tell no one when you are, because the instant you narrate it, it becomes about your weight, not theirs.
That's the assignment. She'd have finished it before your battery charged.
— Lex Luthor
Superman weighs in
Lex, you watched a woman cry over a granola bar and the lesson you drew was "keep it to yourself." Of course you did.
Here's the part you skipped, friend: Darlene doesn't know. Folks like her almost never find out what forty minutes meant. Pa Kent fixed half of Smallville's tractors and went to his grave sure nobody noticed. We noticed.
So stock the trunk — that's good, do it — but first go back to that lot. Ask the manager, leave a note, find her. Tell her, out loud, by name, what she did. It's never too late to do the right thing, and the right thing here has a face.
— Superman
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