I walked outside on Sunday and Tom, the young son of our neighbor, called out to me. “Mr. Cota,” he hollered, “my uncle Andy is here and he’s a superhero. And he’s gonna stay with us and it’s gonna be awesome!” I could put a lot of exclamation points at the end of that statement, but it still wouldn’t convey the pure, unadulterated excitement Tom was feeling.

I, however, being older and wise, responded, “He’s a superhero, eh? Wow. That’s pretty cool having a superhero for an uncle.”

“Yeah, you want to come over and meet him? I’ll run in and get him!”

I did, in fact, want to meet him, but I was on a mission to retrieve Lily from the other neighbor’s house and get us all to mass on time. (Not quite a ‘superhero mission’, but a mission nonetheless.) I asked Tom if I could meet him later and he agreed. I was looking forward to it.

A few hours later, I’m outside again, and Tom yells across the street: “Mr. Cota! Do you want to meet my uncle Andy? He’s a superhero!” About this time, all of the neighborhood kids went flying across the street to meet Uncle Andy, Superhero.

Turns out that Andy is an FBI agent based out of Oregon and assigned to anti-terrorism. He also happens to be a member of the FBI tactical response team (think SWAT), an additional duty that these guys do because they want to, not because they get additional pay (they don’t.) In Tom’s eyes, that makes Andy a superhero.

I agree with Tom.