Loose Ends: Life with a Super Hero

It’s not always easy to be married to a Super Hero. Sure it’s great when you need a jar of applesauce opened or a car lifted up and moved, but there are other times when it’s exasperating.

Super strength, speed, and impatience can be a tricky combination. One of the earliest examples of John’s super powers happened when he was just a boy. Another Mom was complaining about something her son did when John’s mom quipped, “Well, has he ever pulled the door knob entirely off the door because it wasn’t opening fast enough? My son John did that the other day.” The other mom couldn’t top that.

John says he was 12 when he started working out,
but here's evidence that he was younger.

After we’d been married awhile, John’s mom told me that while he was growing up, they were on a first name basis with the doctors and nurses at the emergency room. He had a lot of energy and was fearless.

John started working out with weights and participating in sports when he was twelve. As a teenager, he was on the high school wrestling team.

He was also a boxer and competed in the New York Golden Gloves. He trained in the Huntington Athletic Club, the same gym Gerry Cooney trained in. Cooney went on to fight Larry Holmes for the heavy weight title in 1982 as well as Michael Spinks in 1987, and George Forman. Their trainer, John Capobianco, had John and Gerry spar often. Although Cooney was taller at 6’6” and was a heavier than John, John gave him a run for his money.

Cooney went pro. John went to college, first to Quinnipiac in Connecticut, then to Syracuse University.

We met at Louisiana State University. That’s also where John met his best friend Lee who was majoring in Chemical Engineering and teaching Kung Fu at the armory gym on campus.

John was working out and boxing there. A Venezuelan Kickboxer challenged John to spar. John agreed. Lee sat on the sidelines with some of his students. He saw it as a teaching opportunity and told his students to watch carefully. They would see why martial arts was superior to boxing.

John got in the ring with his opponent who threw kicks at him. John covered up and planned his strategy. The sparring intensified to fighting. It didn’t take long for him to get the guy’s number and clock him. Fight over. Lee introduced himself and asked John to teach him to box. Lee and John became roommates and buddies with many tales to tell.

John and his buddy Lee

But it wasn’t boxing that attracted me to John, it was his dancing abilities. The first time we met was not one of my finest moments. I was two weeks away from a broken engagement, and had decided I was going to get a cat and live the rest of my life as a spinster.

My roommate Ann thought I needed to get out (maybe she just didn’t want a cat). She was a secretary in the Entomology Department where John was studying for his Master’s degree. I was an advertising copywriter at a retail store headquartered in Baton Rouge. One Friday afternoon in October 1978, she called me at work to say they had some new graduate students in the department and they were all going out to happy hour at a disco. She told me to go home after work and get ready to go out.

I got home and planned to fake being sick to get out of it, but she showed up early with John and a female grad student and ordered me to get my purse and get in the car. Let’s just say I wasn’t very pleasant. John was coming on strong and kept trying to impress me. I kept deflecting him and eventually broke down in tears about my ex dumping me. Any normal guy with some common sense would’ve run.

But John the super hero, told me to just get up and dance. He coaxed/dragged me onto Pharoah’s dance floor which had squares that lit up like the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever. We shook our groove thangs. I got my emotions under control.

Back at the table, he told me that he’d been to Studio 54 in New York City. At Syracuse University he boxed with a group of Puerto Rican guys. They got to be friends and introduced him to Latin and disco dancing. They were top notch dancers, so they (including John) danced in competitions. John had also taught salsa and disco dance lessons in New York.

I asked if he meant “holding on” dancing. He said yes. Could he teach me? Definitely. I thought he might be BS-ing me, but I softened.

He was good on his word about the dance lessons. He taught me how to do the New York hustle—not the line dance one in Saturday Night Fever which he says nobody did in NY. The NY hustle is a six count dance with partners holding on to each other. In my case, with John as my dance partner, sometimes that means holding on for dear life.

When he leads, it’s not subtle. If he wants you to go in a certain direction on the 5 and 6 counts, there’s no doubt which way he wants you to go. When he wants you to spin, he winds you up, and if you don’t hold onto his fingers as you spot turn, you could launch into orbit!

As I was counting steps and hitting my knees into his, he encouraged me, “Once you get it, it feels like you’re flying.” He was right, it really did!

John disagreed with my spinster/cat plans. In December we got married in the Episcopalian chapel on LSU’s campus a little over a year after we met. Although I had met John’s father, other than that, our families had never met. John's family flew in from New York, and mine flew in from Hawaii.

Somehow, after having our wedding rings engraved, I lost them. That wasn’t discovered until we were at the church and our friend who was the DJ at our reception looked in the ring boxes. John thought he was kidding when he told him there weren’t any rings. He wasn’t.

John called me on the church phone from the room he was in. The lines connecting our phones were sizzling. After all the “How could this happen?" yelling, I told him very firmly that we’d just have to borrow our parent’s wedding rings.

As our newly acquainted parents met to see whose rings would be used, John’s mother apologized to my mom, “I’m so sorry. My son John has a terrible temper.”

My mother smiled sweetly and answered, “Well, you haven’t seen Laura’s temper.”

When I stood at the back of the church holding my dad’s arm ready to meet my groom, I looked up front to the altar. My bridesmaids’ bouquets were trembling. They had all heard the heated “missing rings” phone call. The groomsmen, John’s brothers, Lee, and Ray (from Syracuse University) looked back at me sheepishly.

Bridesmaids: Jaynie, Gail, Cynthia, Ann
Groomsmen: Roy, Glenn, Lee, Ray

The first notes of “Here Comes the Bride,” boomed out from the organ. My eyes welled up. My father squeezed my hand and told me to take a deep breath. John looked back at me and beamed. I smiled back. My bridesmaids exhaled with relief. Their bouquets stopped shaking. All was right with the world.

After graduating from LSU with his Master's degree, John decided to get a PhD in Toxicology at the University of Hawaii. That's where he tried out Olympic Weightlifting. He also met another lifelong friend, Ed in German class.

Ed was the Center on the UH football team. Because of that friendship, John got to work out with the football team. He met another athlete named Karl who was an Olympic weightlifter from California and a mathmetician. Karl taught John and Ed techniques for the snatch as well as the clean and jerk. They were always training to compete against Olympic bound athletes. In 1984 John won the state Olympic Weightlifting championship in the 198 pound weight class.

John and Ed rode mopeds back and forth to campus. It looked awfully funny because they were huge buzzing around on their tiny mopeds. The two of them were like gigantic, unruly boys who didn’t know their strength.

One of John’s friends in the Entomology department got his Datsun blocked into a parking space. No problem, John lifted it up and moved it out so he could pull away. Just a little extra weight training.

Once John and Ed went to their friend Jim’s house to clean their carpets. After they moved the furniture out, it was obvious that it looked like wrestling ring. Ed had also wrestled in high school. The only hitch was that Ed outweighed John by 50 lbs. John ended up with a broken bursa sac in his elbow. There was also a broken lamp. Jim's wife Pam showed up in the midst of the mayhem and with hands on her hips gave them a much deserved scolding.

The Ed, Jim, & John Wrestling and Carpet Cleaning Company

Fast forward to John as a proud father of son Johnny and daughter Sarah.
He built them a wooden swing set. We knew exactly where we wanted it, at the base of a hill in our backyard, on a terrace. John and the kids worked all day on it. When it was time to finally set it up, he sent the kids inside to get me.

“OK, this is what we’re going to do. We are going to drag the swing set up the hill. Then you are going to hold onto the top leg on your side and I will hold the leg on my side. When I say ‘Go,’ pull it down with all your weight. Then when it starts to fall, let go.”

I was afraid. I looked down the hill, “Why didn’t you build it down there to begin with?”

“Look, just do what I said.”

“But what if it keeps going and falls off the terrace and breaks?”

“Just do it. It will be fine. It’s physics. Grab the leg on your side.”

With much trepidation, I did what he said. The whole structure flipped and landed like a gymnast sticking a perfect 10 landing. Our elderly neighbor who unbeknownst to me had been watching the whole time, shouted out, “Nice job John!” The kids, standing a safe distance away, clapped with delight.

The physics swing set.

In injury situations, Johnny bore the brunt of John’s “walk it off” mentality. When Johnny fell off his bike and landed on a freshly chip sealed road gouging his knee, John walked him and his bike home. He started rinsing the gravel out of the wound and told Johnny to quit crying.

When he saw the actual bone of Johnny’s kneecap as he sprayed water in the gouge, he realized how serious it was. He bandaged it up and sent Johnny on his way.

Another time, Johnny was on the elliptical running machine barefoot. He hit his pinky toe and in pain, called to Dad for help. John looked at it and proclaimed, “It’s dislocated. I’ll pop it back into place, just hold on.”

It wasn’t dislocated. It was broken. The emergency room doctor said John did a good job setting the fracture.

Sarah took all this in and learned to come to me if she was injured or confer with John over the phone where he couldn’t actually reach her. She also gave John his family nickname.

One day were going somewhere and I was driving my Camry. John went to the passenger door to get in. The next thing I knew, he was having a fit about something. I looked through the window and he was holding the door handle up in his hand, unattached to the car.

I leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door from inside. “What happened?”

He got in holding the outside door handle and fuming, “Look at this! This car sucks! Who makes a piece of crap like this?”

“You broke my car!”

“I can’t believe Toyota made such a crappy door handle!”

“You broke my car!”

“What is this made of, cheap plastic?”

“You broke my car! Apologize!”

“Why would they make such a defective piece of crap?”

“You broke my car. You need to apologize.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t believe they would make such a poor quality handle. All I did was try to open the door.”

When I told this story to Sarah, she started laughing and said, “It’s like you’re living with The Hulk. ‘Hulk open door, get in car.’” She was right! I AM living with The Hulk.

At the Toyota dealership when I checked in to get the handle replaced, the service lady asked what name the car was under. I told her it was under John Stark, but that she needed to change that. Her hands were ready on the keyboard. “What’s the new name?”

I told her to change it to “Hulk Stark” because my husband ripped the door handle off. Who does that? She laughed.

Living with The Hulk explains a lot. Like the time while I was in Hawaii and during a phone call with Sarah she casually asked me why the side view mirror of my car was on the work bench in the garage. I had no idea what she was talking about.

I called Johnny to ask him about it since he works on our cars and he attempted a vague cover-up-for-Dad shuffle, “Uh, side view mirror? Uh, for which car? The Camry?”

The Hulk knocked my mirror off while pulling out of the garage. He didn’t want to tell me because whenever he pulled into the garage, I’d flinch and tell him he was awfully close to the side and he’d tell me I was over reacting.

Not only did he knock my mirror off, he also backed into the brand new dresser that they’d just picked up for Sarah, but it was OK because it was still in the protected box. Hey, it’s all good!

Johnny was home from college and sleeping in one morning when John went up on the roof to blow the pine needles off. I was always a nervous wreck when he went up there because in our other house he fell off the second story roof, bounced onto the lower level, managed to catch the rain gutter with his fingertips and hang there for a few seconds over the garage before falling. So he said he didn’t really fall, he just dropped one story!

In this house, we have an open beamed ceiling over the family room, so I could hear him clomping around overhead with the gas powered blower. He finally got it started after breaking the pull cord and tying it back together until he could get a new one. So it was angry clomping.

Then I heard him running fast back and forth and swearing. I ran outside, but I couldn’t see him and I was trying to yell over the blower. I ran back inside and busted into Johnny’s room. “Something’s wrong with your father! He’s up on the roof in trouble! Get out there!”

Sleepy Johnny climbed the ladder in his boxers and relayed the message down to me, “Dad said there was a hornet’s nest in our chimney and they swarmed out at him. He was fending them off with the blower, but since the roof is an uneven surface, he tore his calf muscle and can’t move.”

I asked Johnny if we should call the fire department to get him down. Hulk Junior was insulted, “What do you think I can’t carry my father down a ladder? No! We’re not calling the fire department!”

John somehow hobbled down the ladder. He was absolutely furious that his leg cramped up on him when he most needed it. He blamed it on getting old. The next day, when his calf started turning purple he finally went to the walk-in clinic. Old age wasn’t the problem, 40-50 hornet stings in his calf was the problem.

Over the next couple of months, I really paid attention to John’s modus operandi. Sarah and I would giggle and whisper, “Hulk!” whenever we witnessed him breaking something and then being genuinely surprised by his strength. He always blamed the “defective” object for breaking or being in the way.

Sometimes the quality of whatever broke truly was defective. One night I picked him up from the airport. He was returning from Europe. I pulled up curbside and he hucked his suitcase into the trunk.

He opened the passenger door without ripping the handle off, and then turned around and showed me his backside. “Can you believe this? Look at what happened to these stupid pants!”

They were split open from the crotch all the way up to the waistband.

“I flew out of Copenhagen and on the layover in Amsterdam I thought I'd do some squats to get the blood flowing. On the third squat, THIS happened!"
He didn't have a spare pair of pants in his carry-on. He was the comedy hit of the Amsterdam airport, Kennedy airport while clearing customs, and Seatac airport. Apparently, ripped pants are universally hilarious. (He bought two pairs of those cargo pants online because they had lots of pockets and were light weight, perfect for travelling. He split the second pair too!) This is quintessential Hulk behavior. Scientist Dr. Banner also rips his clothes when he transforms into The Incredible Hulk.

One day John finally caught Sarah and me laughing when he did something hulk-ish. He was usually so angry during his episodes, he didn't notice us snickering. We 'fessed up and explained that he was our own personal superhero, The Hulk.

He thought it was pretty funny and took ownership of the title. We bought him a DVD of the movie, Hulk t-shirts and Hulk hands.

That’s who he was the Halloween after he had back surgery to repair an old high school wrestling injury.

There is never a dull moment around here watching John muscle through life. This is so much better than living alone with a cat. I’m glad that in 1979 we didn’t let a pair of missing rings stop our wedding. (They were in a tiny manila envelope that had accidentally fallen into my bedroom trash can.) Happy 38^th anniversary to my Hulk John!