It was a cool spring day, and I was Batman. I was dressed in the stretchy black and gray costume my parents had bought me for Halloween the previous year The wind was rushing around like an unsettled rabbit, my cape billowing epically. Or at least, I pretended it was billowing epically. In reality it was far too light to really successfully billow, and therefore was merely flapping around pathetically, pinned to the top of my back. But I was not really in the mood for reality.

I had my mask off. I was free from the prying eyes of my enemies up here, free from the burden of disguise. I had sneaked out the sliding door in my parents' bedroom on the second floor of our house, onto the deck outside, up over the railing, and onto the roof.

I was on the highest point of the house. The lake was out in front of me, the large cherry tree behind me. Our roof had green shingles and a single, small, faded skylight leading to the living room. I steadied myself against the chimney, careful not to let the wind buffet me off the side, and stared out at Fairview Lake.

Someone was poisoning it, I decided. Someone was putting hallucinogenic carcinogens in the street's water supply, I decided. Or, rather, I probably would have decided, if I had known those words. At the time it was just, "poison."

"Who could it be?" I asked myself in a gravelly Christian Bale voice (although, technically speaking, I suppose Christian Bale hadn't played Batman in anything by that point). "Two-face was doing something shady down by the dock a few days ago..."

I tried to work out the pieces, putting together the things that made sense in my mind. I was Batman, a black-clad, 9-year-old detective who knew how to kick some serious ass. I had never not seen a case through to its conclusion. I was Batman. I was going to make the world better. This villainous plague that permeated society, made it evil, was absolute, but I was not Rorschach from Watchmen (even though I was far too young to ever have read that graphic novel), and I believed humanity could be saved... from itself.

I closed my eyes and in my head I walked down the street to the park where the water filtration system was. I kicked down the locked door and glided inside. There on the wall was a big, green question mark, etched in. I traced it with my gloved fingers.

The Riddler.

Taped to the wall by the Riddler's symbol, the question mark, was a piece of paper with a riddle on it. I quickly solved it to learn that the Riddler was hiding out in the old abandoned Montgomery Warehouse.

I opened my eyes and I was back on the roof. The sky was bright blue, the sun shining down. I ran hurriedly to the tree, jumped up into its foliage, and perched myself on a branch that overhung the building below.

In reality it was my house; in my mind it was the old, abandoned Montgomery Warehouse that housed the Riddler and his secret machinations. And it was at that point, as I stood precariously on that cherry tree branch, looking down into the skylight, the only entrance to the warehouse, that I made arguably one of the worst decisions of my life.

That is the day I will always remember, as the day I didn't jump.