Super Born: Seduction of Being by kkornell

four different mats. Amy won her
age and rank class, defeating a number of young men and women along
the way.
    When she stepped up to the presenter to accept
her trophy, I could she her with uncertainty on her face scanning
the crowd. Then she saw me, and a little smile came to her face. I
pumped my arm in the air and cheered wildly for her. But then some
people in front of us sat down and she saw her little mother
standing beside me in tears of pride. A gigantic smile, unlike any
I had seen from Amy, took over her entire face.
    I knew Amy’s mother was glad she had come.
Seeing her cringe or cheer at every punch and kick her daughter
made or received, I knew she had come to realize the extent of
Amy’s skills and the importance of karate in her life. I just hoped
I could do the same for Paige.

Chapter 8
    My Website Is Born: But No Seconds
on Meat Loaf
    Looking back now, had I known that the B.I.B.
had started showing herself during the day only because she needed
to be home at night to keep peace with her daughter, I might have
acted differently. But under the bold assumption of a shift in the
B.I.B.’s attitude, I took a radical approach.
    I contacted all the fledgling beat
writers who had each written a separate piece on the B.I.B. and
offered them some of Jones’s cash to turn over any item to me that
they might come across regarding a woman dressed in black doing any
kind of unusual deed. I greased palms at any bar of consequence for
any sighting of a woman in black, offering further grease if they
notified me in time to get there before she left. I created a
website, www. thebib.org . On the site, I placed copies of the articles about
her, a blog, a bulletin board, an email exclusively for sightings,
and propaganda I had written about “Scranton’s True Superhero.” As
time went by, trying to keep the site updated with the latest
events and respond to all the emails became a job in and of
itself.
    The beat writers remained greedy, and they fed
me like Jabba the Hutt. By the time I had posted a beat writer’s
article about the arrest of Tony Turtulio, “The Tool,” on
Valentine’s Day, the site was starting to get a lot of hits. A
local news channel then picked up the article from the
website.
    “ Scranton police received a
Valentine’s Day gift today as Tony Turtulio, also known as ‘The
Tool,’ was escorted by a delivery woman to Third Precinct
headquarters. To the amazement and delight of the officers, the
Tool was delivered—as seen in this brief amateur video—unconscious,
dressed as a strawberry, and wearing a floppy, leafy-green hat, and
red clothes, with his torso dipped in chocolate, apparently in
keeping with the holiday,” read the female anchor.
    “ Not just any chocolate, Maria. It
was Gertrude Hall milk chocolate, made right here at their Scranton
plant,” added the male anchor; apparently Gertrude Hall Candies was
an advertiser.
    “ Thanks, Tom. The Tool has several
outstanding warrants for his arrest and is reputed to be the number
four man in the Scranton mob. With some of the federal warrants
carrying twenty-year sentences if he’s convicted, it looks like The
Tool will be spending a number of Valentine’s Days to come behind
bars, where chocolate-covered strawberries will be hard to
find…”
    “ Gertrude Hall chocolate
strawberries, that is,” added Tom.
    The video was priceless. That, along with my
commentary attributing The Tool’s capture to the B.I.B. and
speculation on how she had done it—the chocolate-dipping, I
mean—the site began to flourish. Sure, most of the people
contacting the site were whackos, but the sheer volume of hits was
building.
    By now, I was in love with her sense
of humor; the giant strawberry on Valentine’s Day cracked me up.
She was just doing it for fun, and to embarrass the crime boys.
Having all that power and hiding it in her day-to-day life had to
be amazingly difficult. Everything she did was so remarkable and
significant, yet humble.