When I was 18 I had somewhat of a super hero complex left over from my childhood. I had grown up with Batman as my hero and had an inflated sense that a trained person should be in a position to stop crime. That plus my absorption of Frank Miller's seminal "The Dark Knight Returns" pushed this all into high gear for me. The Batman was back and was badder than ever. Now it was my turn.

Dressing up in tights and a cape was would have been way over the top and besides as much as jumping from building to building would have appealed to me I'm deathly afraid of heights. But oh did I want to do it. Fuck Michael Keaton. I didn't need no stinkin' stunt double.

So instead I did the next best thing. I joined the Guardian Angels. That's right, red beret and all. The Angeles had just moved into the Village in Manhattan. I walked right down to their office and signed up. Well, there was nothing to sign. All you had to do was ask to be in and you were in. They gave you a different shirt than the standard one during your "training period". The was the same except for the words "I support the Guardian Angels" written on the front. When I was given this shirt to wear I found out that there were three levels of Guardian Angel: I Support, Guardian Angel, and Leader. I Supports couldn't do much of anything. You could follow along with patrols and partake in activities but that was about it. Guardian Angels could lead patrols and take with them whoever they wanted. Leaders could take patrols on trains and potentially setup their own operations in other parts of town or cities. Leaders basically told everyone else what to do.

Oh, we had knicknames too. Unlike knicknames in the rest of the world our names were self proclaimed. The idea was to give yourself a knick name not of who you were but of what you wanted to convey. Some had OK names. Hannibal was one of my favorite ones. However, not many people are that creative. We had 3 "Ninja"s. One "Rambo". One "Unique" (well that one got points on originality). Curtis Sliwa's knickname was "Rock". It was an old name he was given due to his ability to stay up for days at a time. The comic book geek in me settled on "Daredevil". Daredevil patrolled the streets of NYC as well. I was 18 and I was inspired. Sue me.

Some cool things I got to do as a Guardian Angel included:

Seeing the premiere to Robocop.
Being in a Mick Jagger video. ("Let's Work". You can catch about 12 nanoseconds of me just before they cut back to Mr. Moose Lips.)
Winding up in a Martial Arts magazine.
Getting to eat all the leftover Popeye's Fried Chicken I could want.


Looks like I might have to stretch this out to a two part story. To be continued.