The world is in grave danger.
Hang on race fans – it’s time for another left turn away from the goofy and a fast drive straight to the darkness.
Civilization as you and I know it cannot go on for much longer in its current state.
This has NOTHING to do with global warming or the Middle East or the dangers of tainted tomatoes.
We are killing ourselves by allowing the world to become a place devoid of HEROES.
When I was a child I was a super hero.
I cannot tell you how many times my ass was kicked stepping in front of a bully in an effort to protect his victim. Seriously, I can’t tell you. Many times. And it sucked. I wasn’t very big and it was a long time before I actually learned to cash the checks my mouth likes to write. But I never stopped because it always FELT like the RIGHT thing to do.
Today I see You Tube videos of kids ambushing each other and marketing it like part of a brutal resume to get hired on the Joker’s crew. I never hear about anybody trying to stop them. Everybody wants to be the bad guy. Nobody wants to be the hero.
I hear parents bitch about the schools and the video games and the tv shows and what a bad role model Britney Spears is but I NEVER hear about a kid getting a beating trying to STOP this bullshit.
When my wife was 8 months pregnant we came upon a group of teenagers who had just had a minor car accident on a desolate road in the middle of the night. The group who had rear ended the other were menacing the younger drivers in an effort to intimidate them inot not calling the police. I pulled my truck to the side of the road and got out to assist.
One of them looked me in the eye and told me that I should get back in the truck as it was none of my business and I “didn’t want any part of that action.”
I did the only thing I could think to . I told him I was a cop and that if he spoke to me that way again I would bust his mouth open and make his retarded friends carry his broken ass home to his drunken mother. Then I flipped open my cell phone and called for “back up”.
Thankfully the mood changed. Suddenly they had always planned to call the cops and it was a “misunderstanding”. The boys in the car that had been hit were eternally grateful and I was strangely calm considering.
My wife was PISSED. ANGRY. VERY ANGRY. Maybe as angry as I have ever seen her.
She expressed the opinion that in our new family state my responsibility now was to HER safety and the safety of our child. By acting as I did, I put them both at risk unnecessarily.
She was right. I could have just called the police from my car without the dramatic showdown . . . but how many people wouldn’t even do THAT?
Did you see the video of the old man in Connecticut that got hit by a car and left in the road for over 5 minutes before ANYONE even tried to stop traffic?
6 years later we were camping in Hershey PA when some back woods freak show with 3 teeth and a dream punched his girlfriend in the face 35 feet away and in direct line of sight of my daughter. My child looked at me to make some sense of what had just happened. . . She was scared of what she had seen and proceeded to say something that I will never forget.
“Dad you have to stop him.” My 6 year old daughter understood it. She got it. She gets it and that son of a bitch at the campsite was lucky to get out with a night in jail because I held a sledge hammer at arms length of him with EVERY intention of taking his head off with it.
And my wife was totally cool with it. Which was nice because she could probably take me in a fair fight
Everyday when my daughter says her prayers she includes the following passage:
“Please give me the courage to stand up for those who are weaker than me and the strength to do the right thing even when it’s hard.”
That is incredible to me. Imagine if we all aimed just for that. Hell even for half of that.
We joke around on this site about Super hero issues and capes under our clothes. I’m telling you right now – I would have it no other way. I am willing to take the face shot for you if you need me to.
I did not tell you this story to brag about what a bad ass I am or tell you how incredible my daughter is (though she certainly is.)
All I’m saying in my meandering – all over the place , slightly more dramatic than necessary style is this:
If we all teach our children to be heroes, there will be less villains and fewer victims.
It ain’t rocket science.
Now somebody make a joke about how old Indiana Jones is.
