When you’re young you think about what comes next and you do what you want when no one is around to make you do what you have to do. The bills get paid and the groceries are bought, parents go to work and you go to school. The bullies push you to fight because you’re small and the girls cluster in girl pods and talk about stupid boys and giggle at your expense. Lunchroom food is awful and you nibble at it because your stomach is empty. You drink milk from cartons to make do and sit on hard wooden seats while overweight old people go through the motions at the front of the class. You do your time and make a passing grade to avoid the humiliation of being held back. You do stupid things but you eventually stop drinking the chocolate milk because it smells a lot like the puddle of puke on the ancient hardwood floor of your afternoon social studies class, left there by the kid who drinks it and spews it up later. You avoid adults, except for your mother, because most adults are indifferent to your existence and are too frequently annoyed by the natural behavior of a juvenile copy of themselves.
You become the remote control for the television and as you grow stronger, you graduate to antenna pole twister. Marshall Dillon becomes your hero on Monday nights and later in the week you fantasize of being tutored by a magical blind Chinese man who calls you Grasshopper. You count the days of the week until Saturday comes and you dread Sundays because that day marks the end of any real free time that you have left. You do your time, day after day and hope to avoid the paddle board and the leather belt.
Your only sanctuary comes in the company of your best friends who understand you better than all the parents and teachers in the world. They are your brothers in arms because they suffer beside you and laugh with you and at your stupid jokes. You’re lost with them in a strange children’s world where adults have no place at all but then there are a few who break the rules and see you for what you might become. They are your guides, your mentors, your true heroes and no matter how long you live, they are there, deep inside of you. Maybe a grandfather or a grandmother, an unusual teacher or someone else.
A hero talks to you and sees you as a young person.
A hero senses what you need and considers the things you will enjoy, like flying a kite, tossing a ball, playing dominoes on the kitchen table or fishing. A hero takes the time to be special but maybe they always were. A hero never leaves you, even when they die, especially then, they stay. They are guideposts along life’s trail for a man to measure himself by. They remind us of how good a person can be and call us back when we stray. They show us how wonderful it is to be needed and they call us to try and nudge us when we don’t. They visit us in dreams and remind us to laugh and to cry.
