It's a bird… it's a plane… it's…

I got into journalism because I wanted to be Superman. No, that's not right. I got into journalism because I wanted to be Clark Kent.

It's not because I dig glasses (though I do), it's because Clark Kent had more power than Superman ever could. I mean sure, Superman saved a few babies from burning buildings and foiled an evil plot here or two. But in Metropolis, there's always another evil supergenius ready to rub his palms together and exclaim: "Ha Ha! After I [perfect, release, chug] this serum, the city will be M-I-I-I-INE!"

It's my theory that Clark Kent could do more than Superman ever could by changing the very roots of his society. Write a Bernstein/Woodward-type expose on white collar crime and Bam! Lex Luthor loses his status as philanthropist extraordinaire. An article aimed at improving inner-city schools could have offered Metallo a choice beyond petty crime. A column casually mentioning how many aliens seemed to be trying to destroy Metropolis every other week and Voila! the Pentagon caves into popular demand and invents a planetary shield capable of stopping threats from other dimensions. I'm being facetious, of course. Brainiac could totally just use his shrink ray to turn the shield into so much glassy dust.

But I digress. The point of good journalism is not to chase ambulances. The point of good journalism is to find out why tragedies occur, how we can improve our emergency response system and what we should do to prevent accidents in the first place. It's not about voyeurism — if we offer people a vivid example of what happens when you drink and drive, maybe people will start planning on be careful before they go to the bar. Of course, our culture is so glutted with meaningless violence already that it's hard to get the point across.

But I had just the smallest taste of what it meant to be Superman the past month-and-a-half when I met the Cotes, a family in distress. They overcame some understandable nervousness to let me into their hearts and their lives so I could write a three-part story on their autistic son, Decker. I especially enjoyed hanging out with Carter, Decker's older brother, who has a mischevious smile and loves being chased across the room. They've been keeping in touch with me throughout the whole process and today, I had a nice call from Charlie telling me that Decker completed his first workshop and it went really well — Decker's made more progress in four days than he had in the past nine months, she said. Because of all the frequent flier miles donated to her from the community, she also thinks she might be able to afford to have the specialist visit Decker once every few months. The Cotes have their challenges but they're also really blessed. Decker, unlike some autistic kids, does respond to people in his own, quiet way (probably because of the treatment he's received so far), and his eyes could melt even the most cynical reporter's heart. It's hard for me to resist a child's eyes. My cousins found out they can walk all over me. I can't say no to anyone who is the least bit adorable, which is why I'm glad to have played a small part in getting Decker some treatment.

After I met the Cotes, the real work began. There is so much information about autism out there — it really was overwhelming. And I'm a reporter: university-trained to find and sort facts. I can't imagine how awful it would be going through all this stuff when you're a distressed parent. I could easily have written a ten-part story just filled with statistics. The hardest part was choosing what to cut. Unfortunately, being a curious individual that I am, I think everything is interesting, so I had to chop off bits that I thought had the least relevence to Decker's story. I once read an article in Writer's Digest saying that a writer's real job is to "murder their darlings," ie, their darling facts, their darling metaphors, their darling quotations.

Here's a snippet that got left behind:

Despite the immunization scare in late '90s, [clinical geneticist Dr. Jim] Reynolds called autism "primarily a genetic disorder."

"You tease that out by looking at twin studies," he said. Identical twins studies have found that if one child has autism, it's 70 to 90 percent likely that the other child has autism as well. Also, autistic kids often have close relatives that have autistic symptoms if not autism itself. "They tend to be loners, not socially adept," he said. "They may have had speech impediments and language problems." All this proves that autism has a degree of "high heritability," he explained…

Well, looks like I managed to slide that bit into the paper after all. While I got the superhero feeling that comes from real, honest-to-goodness Clark Kent journalism, the real Supermans are the hundreds of people who opened their hearts and their pocketbooks for the Cotes. The Dream for Decker fundraiser took care of Decker's treatment for the next year, and I couldn't be prouder to be a part of this community. I hope, in the future, that the state will help families like the Cotes by offering a Medicaid waiver. If you want to keep helping autistic kids, talk to your legislators about the challenges of autism and the power of early intervention. In an election year, voters have the ability to extract promises from people running. Sometimes, politicians even keep them.

But no matter what the future holds for the Cotes, I'm glad they have gotten past this first step. Spaghetti feasts may not be very good settings for climatic battles between good and evil, but they are good settings for the small miracles that make life so wonderful.