Some of you may remember the View-Master, a stereoscopic picture view by Fisher-Price. Basically you put in a “reel” and could see 3D images. You could get generic View-Master “reels” that had nice pictures, such as those of Yellowstone National Park, or the like, or you could get ones that tell stories as each frame could have some text associated with it. View-Master “reels” came in a set of three or four “reels”, as you couldn’t tell much of a story without a lot of pictures. Many were based on various films and such, Disney movies were particularly popular. Heck, I don’t know why I’m talking about them in the past tense. I’m pretty sure they still make and sell View-Masters and their corresponding “reels”. When I was a lad we had a View-Master, and we had such cool reels as those containing Dinosaurs. Basically it was awesome. Everyone had a View-Master.
Well maybe not everyone, but there was one at the lady’s house that I went to daycare for. Now being that I had a View-Master at home, you might think I wouldn’t care much about hers. That’s where you’re wrong. You see, there were literally thousands of “reels” out there. Maybe hundreds of thousands, and everyone had different ones, so there was no reason not to check out the ones she had.
I found one of her sets called Bibley Heroes, and she also had Bibley Heroes 2 and Bibley Heroes 3. Now keep in mind, that is just what I was calling them. “Bibley Heroes” is pronounced \ˈbib-lē\ Heroes. That is, the first syllable being “Bib” like the bib that babies wear when eating. And the last syllable being “Lee” like Stan Lee or the lee side of the mountain. Well, I kind of liked superheroes and I figured these Bibley Heroes must be some kind of superhero that I just never heard of. I mean my knowledge of superheros was kind of limited. I’m pretty sure that, at the time, all I’d heard of was Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man. But I kind of liked them, so I wasn’t opposed to find out who these Bibley Heroes were.
You can imagine I was disappointed that the first hero was just some guy named David. There wasn’t even “super” in his name at all. Worse than that it took place in ancient times, and I was like, ”Whaaat? I thought superheros only existed in the present or future.” He did seem to have super-strength though, as he did fight a giant. So I moved onto the next one, this one was about another ordinary dude named Daniel. ”Where are the superhero names?” I wondered. Apparently this guy was a friend with Lions, okay kind of a superhero power, but nothing like Superman’s flying.
About the time that I got to a “superhero” named Noah, and a flood, I realized where I had gone wrong. They weren’t Bibley Heroes, they were \ˈbī-bəl\ Heroes. I’d been pronouncing the first word wrong. I felt like an idiot. There I was, a young man that went to Sunday School every week and I didn’t even know how to spell “Bible”. I reckon I knew how to spell it after that.
