They used to call me Mr. Glass

M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable is highly underrated. When I saw it in 2000, it was the most realistic rise-of-superhero-and-supervillain that I had ever seen on film. A comparable film in theaters now is Chronicle. Both films answer the question, What would the world be like if superpowers were real?

* Kick-Ass is a great film addressing What would the world be like if we really had masked avengers fighting crime? But no one has superpowers.

In Unbreakable, Sam Jackson has a disease that makes him especially frail. i.e. They call me Mr. Glass.

Bruce Willis can not be injured. He’s “Unbreakable.” He doesn’t get a cool superhero name, just goes by David Dunn. A name so forgettable I had to look it up.

For several years now, I have identified with Mr. Glass. Breakable as a starfish. I broke my foot doing step aerobics two years ago, and it’s still not all the way better.

I developed a stiff neck from carrying a heavy camera around my neck for an afternoon. The stiff neck lasted weeks. I had to do physical therapy.

I suffer from TMJ; I lack the jaw strength to chew food.

You know those self-esteem exercises, or whatever they are, where people identify the thing that makes them most self-conscious? Then they “own it” by wearing it on a T-shirt? It was on the “Born This Way” episode of Glee. That’s a thing right?

I thought about what my “flaw” is. Sure there are some physical things I’m self-conscious about, but none that haunt me enough that I need to wear it on a T-shirt. I realized that the word I should own was “weak.” The thing I like least about myself that I wish I could change. I want to be able to train in martial arts without aggravating my foot or my neck. I don’t want to be the girl who sank to the ground crying because she couldn’t make it to the Bat Caves in the rain. Oh, but waitaminute, I conquered that demon last September. I proved to myself that I’m not weak.

This is risky to put out there in the universe, because it’s only been two days, and maybe the whiplash just hasn’t set in yet…

…but I cannot freaking believe that I am not in more pain after being rear-ended on the freeway.

The chiropractor kept shaking his head in amazement. “This could have been so much worse.” It was actually embarrassing filling out the form. What level is my pain? Oh, about a 2. Which is less than it is on an average day. Was my body so out of whack that the collision simply knocked everything back into place?

I’m taking the preventative measures of chiropractic, acupuncture and massage therapy. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Any day now, I’m going to wake up and not be able to move. Since I have a history of chronic neck and back pain, I have every reason to believe this accident has done some damage that hasn’t manifested yet.

My point. Is. I do not feel like Mr. Glass today. I feel like David Dunn. I feel like I should have been really badly injured. And the fact that I don’t even have a bruise from my seat belt shoulder strap seems to me a minor miracle. Or like, really, really good luck.