Have a Super Day!

Do you remember when “super” meant the Man of Steel, who could fly, see through buildings, and break through concrete walls?  Yes, that was truly super.  Anything super was truly spectacular – so high above us regular people that it was, well, just imaginary. Superheroes wore body suits and capes with their initials boldly splashed across their incredible physiques.  Of course, they had masks to cleverly conceal their everyday identities.  Clark Kent had those black rimmed glasses so that none of us ever suspected who he really was.  Ok, a couple of us really perceptive viewers suspected, but Lois and Jimmy never caught on.

I blame the marketing people that used “supersize” to enlarge burgers and portions of French fries, and thus the term lost much of its superhero magic.  Car engines were “suped” up, meaning they were noisy, pumped out lots of toxic fumes, and propelled those vehicles to dizzyingly illegal speeds.  That made significant contributions to the culture of the last mid-century.  The inventors of the internal combustion engine would be super-proud.

Now, however, we find “super” to be way overused and considerably misstated.   The real estate people, often prone to exaggeration anyway, have taken the poor word to new levels.  One might expect that a “super-cute” house would be a miniature Versailles, complete with formal gardens and statuary.  No, no – it’s just a cape with a couple of dormer windows.  No Hall of Mirrors or Throne Room as you enter. Just a hall and a room. Occasionally someone has added trim bits like “crown molding” to make it “super-special”.   Still no Versailles. We hear on HGTV that something is “super-stylish”. Again, not a penthouse in New York, but a ranch in Dubuque that has new paint and some tilework in the bathroom. They’ve thrown in a stainless steel appliance or two, and voila!  Super-update. Cozy, which traditionally meant small and intimate, has become “super-cozy”, which means we’ve gone from intimate to claustrophobic.  Lots of super-cozy homes have become “open concept”, banging down walls to create the illusion of vast space and infinite light.  Ironically, most competent real estate agents will tell sellers to de-clutter and de-personalize their homes before putting them on the market.  “Get rid of your crap” is their mantra.  Neutralize that “super-cute” pink room with the lime green accent wall.

Perhaps not all of the blame can be placed on the burger or real estate people.  When markets became supermarkets by adding an automotive aisle and upgraded the produce section with those misty sprinklers, the word really took a downturn.  We only go to the local market, which is now a “convenience” store just to buy candy bars and lottery tickets.  (We all know they sell more winning tickets than the big chains.  I personally buy in different locations to confuse the lottery people.  They won’t know it’s me and I’ll win millions quite by accident.  But that’s another story.)  Then we saw the emergence of the “superette” – not quite a supermarket, but perhaps just a dash more than a basic market.  What does that word even mean?  Super is larger than life, while “ette” means little.  These stores, then, are larger and better yet smaller and cuter. The difference here between a convenience store and a superette is imperceptible.  The household products on the back shelf have still been there since 1982. The old guy wearing a white apron has been replaced by a disenchanted teenager on a cellphone, should you wish to make a purchase. On the plus side, the teenagers understand technology, so they’re less likely to screw up your lottery tickets.  On the flip side, they have only a glancing knowledge of currency and probably can’t make change.

We hear the word “super” applied to almost any noun or adjective.  Someone on a talk show the other day was “super-nice”.  There must be categories of “nice”.  Nice  is pleasing and friendly; very nice, which is better and implies hugging; and super-nice, which means he or she will be canonized in the near future.  While many of us see ourselves in that last category, our inner and outer circles may beg to differ.  Tonight, or late this afternoon, we’ll see a supermoon, something that happens twice a year, when the moon is much closer to the Earth, which means it will appear much larger.  That seems to fit the description better than super-cute.  I have read about superninjas.  Similar to “nice”, there are ninjas, able to defend themselves with a sharp kick to an essential body part, then darned good ninjas, able to take out the Karate Kid, and then there is the  Super Ninja, who can presumably disable a whole bunch of regular ninjas at once or some heavy artillery.  Many weather “events” that we dealt with in the past – hurricanes, typhoons, tornados, have become “superstorms”.  That seems to be a completely appropriate use of the term.  They are well above the norm, although superstorms are rapidly becoming the norm.  We’re seeing “hundred year hurricanes” and “fifty year floods” every three or four years.  They’ve upped the ante of destruction and mayhem significantly, so maybe now they’re just “storms”.  Inventors tell us about “superconductors”, which allow for expanded flow levels of electricity.  That too seems fair.  Is there really such a person as a  Superstar?  A star is, by definition, not one of us.  A true superstar will live on in history, so perhaps a 25-year-old superstar having made a couple of popular movies or performed some music that’s selling well is a bit of a stretch.   When they die of natural causes, we’ll just wait another fifty years and see if they truly were super.

I think I’ve done a super job on this blog, thank you all very much.  It goes well beyond my usual level, providing super-clarity and some really super insights.  I must now go over to the supermarket and pick up something for dinner.  It will undoubtedly be super-tasty.  To all my readers, have a super week.