From the point I could eat solid food to about ten years old I started most of my Saturday’s off by making chocolate chip pancakes with my dad. Every time we did this, my father would turn on the TV to watch some of the “old-time” reruns that brought him back to his childhood. One weekend my dad flipped the channel to “Through the Decades”, a program run by CBS. Suddenly a series of “Na Na Na...” ran across the screen and the 1966 Batman TV  show came on. From the “Kaboom” and “Wham” flashing in bright colors to the tongue-twisting brain-teasers, I quickly learned to adore every element of this old-timey show; however, Batman by a long shot had to be my favorite aspect of this show. What I didn’t know at the time was that Batman’s alter ego wasn’t Bruce Wayne but actually an amazing actor Adam West. After having this realization that there was a different face behind Batman, I started to do some research on Adam West and quickly learned how West held the qualities of a real-life hero. We will see how Adam West is in the same pan as a hero in my eyes by starting with stirring the batter and focusing  on West’s simple start to life, then initiate the cooking of the pancakes and see how West was himself even when others negatively criticized his acting, and finally flipping the pancakes over and noticing his wide-reaching influence over people during his life. So without further ado let us start making some pancakes.

Starting by making the batter, we should focus on Adam West simple start by viewing his parents, Audrey Speer, his mother, and Otto West Anderson, his father. Turning first to examine his mother, it quickly becomes apparent that West got his genes for acting from Speer. Audrey Speer was an opera singer and dreamed of one day becoming a big Hollywood star, but after giving birth to her son, Adam West, she had to give up her dreams in order to move to Washington with her husband to raise their son. Under the influence of his mother, Adam West told his father he was going to go into the entertainment business just as his mother had. After understanding that West's motivation has come from his mother, it’s time to observe his father’s influence. West lived on a wheat farm until he was fifteen, which was when he was forced to move to Seattle with his mother after his parent’s got a divorce. Soon after college, Adam West was drafted into the army and when he got home from his military services, West went back to work on his father's farm. Farming seems to take an incredible amount of hard work in my opinion. So with the combination of motivation to be an entertainer that West inherited from his mother and great work ethic from his father, West was definitely gifted the ingredients necessary for a successful life despite his simple start. I feel I am starting the same way with my personal motivation coming from wanting to go into the same career field as my father, computer sciences, while the work ethic that I have is clearly coming from my mother, she has done most of our house renovation herself. With the ingredient of a simple start in the bowl, let us continue to make our hero breakfast.

Our batter is now made, let’s move on to cooking our pancakes and noticing West’s impeccable ability to be himself. The best way to do this is to analyze his acting career. One of West’s earlier parts was playing a spy named Captain Q in a Nestle Quik commercial. Around the same time as the commercial, ABC was having trouble picking an actor for the Batman part because the writers decided to have many comical lines that Batman was going to say, but the lines would only be funny if the audience believed the actor was Batman. With his straight face seriousness displayed in his part as Captain Q, it was very clear to ABC that West could play the part and he did so excellently. This may have been just acting, but let’s regard a quote from an interview with Burt Ward, the actor who played Robin, conducted by SyFy Wire “Not every director got the style that we had created and we wanted to maintain a consistency … they let us go and we just had fun with it.” This quote shows West was playing himself on the set even though the show went through twenty directors in just under four years. However, the best way that we can see West being himself is to view people who were fans of the gruesome comic book Batman, and hated the farcical Batman that West created. According to Ward, I have West to be thanking as he didn’t change Batman’s persona to please the fans of the Dark Knight. Now that we have seen how West play Batman in the 1960’s, we have found that West has the ability to be himself even with negative comments. With one side of the pancakes golden brown, it’s time to flip it before the crispy perfection becomes a hockey puck.

Flipping to the other side of the pancake it is now time to examine the influence that  Adam West has had on numerous people. The truth of this statement can be found in many different examples, one of the best reveals itself with a quick Google search of “Bright Knight Batman”.  Plugging these three words into a search engine will produce an overwhelming number of websites relating to Adam West to appear. This phenomenon happens because the modern Batmen are so much sinister than the one depicted by West, so fans call him the Bright Knight. Since the Batman show was for children, it doesn’t need to have the violence that the modern Batmen used. The lighter feeling of Adam West has created a much more positive influence for many of the kids than the modern Batmen. Another way his influence can be seen is in the people of Los Angeles, California on June 15 of 2017, when the city shone the Bat-signal on the City Hall building. This was in memory of Adam West who had six days earlier passed away from leukemia. If a city was willing to take a day out of the year to celebrate a man clearly that man must have had enough impact on people to make it worthwhile. Finally, the biggest way that West shows his influence over people is to look at me, a teenager who chose to write an essay about him. From watching a TV show with him in it a single time, I was influenced immeasurably by West. With these facts, it is clear that West has positively influenced many people during his life, which is another characteristic of a hero by my standards. Finally, with our pancakes golden brown let's go review all of the characteristics of Adam West again.

With our pancakes made it is time to eat them and investigate how we found that Adam West is a hero. We start off by making the batter and admiring Adam West simple start, and then moved on to cooking the pancakes and focus on how West was good at being himself, and finally flipping the pancake, it becomes clear Adam West has influenced a lot of people. Some of these characteristics like the simple start and being yourself does not really seem to be related to being a hero, but I would beg to differ. For me, someone who starts off at the bottom and works their way up is more inspiring than a person who started at the top and stays there. As well someone who changes to be what everybody wants them to be is less inspiring to me than a person like Adam West who did not change his personality based on negative comments. Lastly, the key to being a positive influence is one’s ability to inspire people. Adam West did this by inspiring me and a whole lot of other people and I think that inspiration what truly makes a hero. With all of this put together, I am thankful for the weekends that I spend with my dad where I was inspired by my one true Batman, Adam West. Oh, and the pancakes were pretty good too.