Rangeman Talks to Some Kids

 Rangeman continued to walk all over NYC, wearing the watch which gave him superpowers,

swimming across the rivers, climbing trees and fire escapes and other structures to rescue cats, and spreading his superhero message: "Be nice!"

One day, in Brooklyn, he heard a bunch of small children yelling, "Rangeman! Rangeman!" He ran in the direction of the voices, trying to see what the emergency was which called for his superpowers. The children were pressed up inside a playground fence, jumping up and down and shouting his name. 

Eventually Rangeman figured out that there was no emergency, and that the children were just excited to meet him. "Okay, children," he said, "have you been being nice?"

The kids talked excitedly all at once about how being nice had accomplished so many amazing things in their lives. 

"It's great being nice, isn't it?" Rangeman asked, and the little kids jumped up and own and yelled their agreement. 

Then Rangeman noticed another group of kids inside the playground fence, a little way away, watching quietly. Nervous smiles, hands in pockets, a few pimples. These kids were older. Looked like junior high, maybe. Rangeman had already had some experience with kids in this age group. He knew they could be skittish. He knew that occasionally, kids in the junior high age group got the notion that being nice was uncool -- somewhat like Tony Stark, it suddenly occurred to him. Rangeman called over to the bigger kids, "And how about you? Have you been being nice?"

One of the older kids yelled back, "Did you really choke Tony Stark?" This question occasioned a ripple of nervous laughter among the bigger kids.

Rangeman sighed. "Yes, I really did choke Tony, a little bit. A couple of minutes after I met him. It was wrong for me to do that. Completely wrong."

Another one of the bigger kids yelled, "So why did you do it?"

"He was being a dick. A real dick. But that's no excuse! Tony has a lot of problems. Some people think billionaires don't have problems. But the truth is, Tony's parents both died when he was a kid, his dad had put a lot of pressure on him before that, he has a radioactive thing in his chest and he'll die if it comes out -- in short, children, he has a lot of exactly the same kinds of problems everybody else has. 

"None of that is any excuse for him being a dick. But him being a dick is also no excuse for me, or anyone else, to choke him. It's important to be nice even when it's very hard to be nice." 

After a short silence, the older kids all began shouting excitedly, about how he was right, about all of the problems which had been solved by their being nice, how awesome it was to be nice...

They fell silent again. One of the older kids asked, "Hey, Rangeman. Are you crying?"

"Yeff. I'm crying," Rangeman said, the fluids having turned the s in yes to an ff. Somebody tossed a package of Kleenexes over the fence. Rangeman said thank you, turned away to blow his nose, then faced the kids and said thank you again.

"Why are you crying?" one of the smaller children asked. "Are you unhappy?"

"No," Rangeman replied. "I'm crying because I'm very happy." He sensed that maybe the children didn't understand, so he explained: "Sometimes you get so happy that it's overwhelming, and it makes you cry. But it's not a bad thing. Not at all. You kids here -- all of you," he added, and waved his arms to include both groups, "are so awesome, that it makes me very happy."

A teacher had noticed that a grown man was talking to some children through the fence and approached to shoo him away, but as he got close he realized who it was. "Hey, Rangeman!" he shouted.

"Hi," Rangeman said back. "Outstanding bunch of children you have here."

"You got that right!" the teacher emphatically agreed.

"You got any cats need to be rescued?"

"No," the teacher said, "as far as I know, for now, all of our cats are good."

Rangeman walked away, and called over his shoulder, "Well, if that ever changes, you know how to contact me."

"That's right, Rangeman!" the teacher called back. But after a while he realized that, actually, he had no idea how to contact Rangeman.