Sometimes even superheroes don't want to go to work, says Stonington writer Sam Kestenbaum.

There are mornings when Robin, Batman's crime-fighting sidekick, hits the snooze button on his alarm and groans.

"I'm tired," he'll say to himself, "My back is sore from fighting super-villains last night. It's not like the Joker is my arch-nemesis!" He winces from the pain in his shoulders. "I'll let Batman do the fighting today, I don't need to save the world."

Robin tosses and turns in his bed, but his conscience won't let him fall back to sleep. Frustrated, he throws off his blanket and dresses quickly. He steps into his rubber boots, ties on his mask and buckles his belt as he limps his way to the Bat-cave. He does this because this is what sidekicks are supposed to do. They go to work; they show up in the morning.

I'm a sidekick too. After graduating college this past May, I moved back to my home state of Maine and found a job on a commercial lobster boat as a sternman, one half of a two-man crew.

My captain pilots the ship and gaffs the buoys as I heft the heavy, concrete-weighted lobster traps out of the hydraulic winch. Once onboard, I quickly pick through the catch, throwing overboard crabs, sea cucumbers and starfish. Then I measure each lobster before putting rubber bands on their snapping claws. We repeat this routine around two hundred and fifty times a day; our workdays can easily last for eleven hours.

My captain owns the boat and the traps, buys our bait and fuel. I do the heavy lifting and am paid a percentage of each day's landings.

Like a lot of other sidekicks -- Batman's Robin, Sherlock's Watson, Lone Ranger's Tonto, or Han Solo's Chewbacca -- I am a loyal assistant, not the main character in the story but the supporting role.

If Robin and I were to meet we would find that we have a lot in common.

"We're not catching anything close to shore anymore -- the lobsters have all crawled off into the deeper water," I explain to Robin, who is still in costume.

"We've been taking thirty traps onboard at a time, shifting them offshore. These traps aren't light! They're all lined with concrete. At the end of the day I feel that weight in my shoulders."

Robin nods, "Batman and I were trapped in an avalanche set off by the Joker with dynamite. We had to tunnel our way out with only our bare hands. The next morning I could hardly lift my arms," he says, rubbing his left bicep.

"So Robin, why do we do this anyway, why be sidekicks?" I ask.

Robin shrugs. "Someday I'm going to be my own superhero with my own secret headquarters, my own costume and maybe even my own sidekick. For now, I do what Batman says. It just seems like the right thing to do. He can't fight Joker on his own."

The lobstering community where I work is something of a New England Wild West where many fishermen are known for their taste for liquor and are prone to frontier-like violence.

A story is told of one young sternman coming to work on his captain's boat reeking of booze from the night before and insisting that he is fine to work. A few hours into the day, the sternman is passed out, face down in a box full of bait. In his hand -- a water bottle filled with rum.

In this story -- and there are many other like it on the waterfront -- sternmen are somehow both heroic and idiotic. There is something both marginal and noble about being a sidekick, foolish yet earnest.

I understand how these other sidekicks may have felt on early mornings. They might have been sore from yesterday's work, maybe taking a dose of painkillers with their breakfast of coffee and toast as they head out to meet their boss, lunch pail in hand.

We know that we're not the true superhero of the narrative, we're not the one who's going to be awarded the medal or be on the evening news, we're not fully responsible for saving the day; but we show up, we do our job as best as we can.

Robin doesn't have to pay for the gas in the Bat-mobile. He doesn't have to meet with the Gotham Police to predict where the Joker will strike next. Robin just has to buy his gloves, his mask, his tights and his boots. He has to have faith in the vigilante lifestyle and Batman's crime-fighting mission, accepting its danger and long hours. He has to show up whenever the bat signal flashes in the sky, and show up sober.

Writer Sam Kestenbaum is also a sternman on a lobster boat out of Stonington.