Batman Abroad

The truly brilliant idea for the trip flowered while my boyfriend and I toyed with a gimmicky Batman figure he got from a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. (We were in need of a little taste of home.) He suggested a photo session of Batman in and around his grandma’s house, which blossomed into a shoot of Batman across Greece (we’ll have a website or a book soon). We took batman to his cousins’ restaurant for a Kodak moment with an old Rock Ola jukebox and a convincing image of Batman in front of the Parthenon (or Batman in front of a framed picture of the Parthenon). We also took Batman to the beach for drinks, sun bathing, swimming, and volleyball. Today he joined us for lunch and checked out an octopus drying in the sun. With a little help from his cousin’s wife, we explained our scheme to a group of his family and their friends while out for drinks last night, and apparently there is a similar tradition in Greece of photographing a Barbie in various locations and positions.

So tickled by this scavenger hunt for new subjects, settings and perspectives, we drove back to the grocery store in the neighbouring town to buy three more boxes of cereal in an attempt to collect all four figures offered in this promotion.

We had the double-uppercut Batman but wanted the right-jab Batman, the right-uppercut Scarecrow and especially the right-kick Joker. We put our money on another box of Honey Nut Cheerios, a box of Cookie Crunch (which neither of us have eaten in ages) and a box of Multigrain Cheerios (to counteract the sugar rush from the other two cereals). Unable to withstand the suspense and eager to estimate how much more we’d have to spend to get the Joker, we tore open all three boxes in the car. The Honey Nut Cheerios yielded a Scarecrow, the Multigrain Cheerios another Scarecrow, and the Cookie Crunch … a Joker! In celebration we snacked on the Cookie Crunch if only to retain our high artificially through a sugar overdose.