The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a 2006 memoir by best-selling travel writer Bill Bryson. The book delves into Bryson’s past, telling of his youth growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woolen jersey of rare fineness.
Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better.
It was obviously the Sacred Jersey of Zap, and proved that he had been placed with this innocuous family in the middle of America to fly, become invisible, shoot guns out of people’s hands from a distance, and wear his underpants over his jeans in the manner of Superman.
