I am one of those people who was raised in a household where police officers, fire fighters, as well as military personnel were considered to be real life superheroes. This could have been because both of my parents had served in the military, or that my mother had worked at Los Angeles Police Department, or it could just have been because…well…those employed in those specific fields are supposed to be superheroes.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’ve grown up since then. I, like most folks, recognize that these men and women are just human. They are full of flaws just like the rest of us, only they are in a day in and day out, face to face with some pretty big horrors, unlike many of us who just have to see it intermittently.
The roommate and I were watching Pride and Glory, a sort of modified good cop/bad cop movie, which was actually pretty decent. I cried throughout most of the movie though, so today I have a bit of puff under my eyes.
It’s hard for me to know that sometimes these folks do super duper bad things. It’s that little girl in me that still believes.
When the pictures of those military personnel showed up in the media everywhere, you know the ones, the soldiers, both men and women, torturing their prisoners, humiliating them, laughing and smiling and showing about as much evil in their faces as one can possibly show in a photograph, I think that I lost a bit of that childhood belief.
When my daughter’s father was pulled over and told, in front of my five year old daughter that he (the police officer) could blow the head right off of my ex and put my daughter into a foster home, and no one would question it…yeah, I lost some of that belief then as well.
But then…my neighbor (he and his brother are both mildly mentally disabled) was hit by a car and taken to the nearby hospital. A police officer came to my neighbor’s door and explained what had happened, was kind and gentle and reassuring and offered to take my neighbor to the hospital, a job that I know isn’t really his responsibility.
I know, it’s a little thing, right? It’s just one little moment, but hearing it from my kitchen window (yes, I was totally nosing in), was so…uplifting. And to the neighbor, it was very heroic.
It reminded me that because they are human, they are capable of being heroes. It isn’t a specific job, a specific religion, a specific age, gender, ethnicity or race, lifestyle, or anything else that can lead to heroism.
Heroism is accessible to everyone, available for the taking, plenty to go around. Whether it is a simple thing that is heroic to only one person in this big wide world, or whether it is heroism on a grand scale, witnessed by many, we are each capable of doing something…something that leaves a piece of us, a beautifully shared piece of us, with another.
So although I don’t still think that all police officers, fire fighters and military personnel are heroes, I certainly still think that they are all capable of it…it’s simply a matter of choice.
So now, my superheroes are a little more diverse; single parents who, in this crap economy, still manage to be excellent parents and teach their children to grow up to be great adults, those who give their children up for the child’s benefit, the man in Watts who was smoking pot in front of his little shop but still took the time to send his teenage son with me to take pictures of the Watts Tower, because he didn’t want me walking “in that neighborhood alone,” the absolutely gorgeous young man who was kicked out of his home when he came out of the proverbial closet, living under the bridge and yet walks around the park when the sun goes down, to make sure that everyone there is warm enough, those men and women who have been victims of abuse and have survived, but also not perpetrated the cycle, and how about those children, all over the world, whether abused by their families, or kidnapped, or assaulted, or forced into militias, who survive, live to tell the tale, and make sure that they heal from their ordeals. My superheroes are the grandparents who babysit, the bloggers who fight the iniquities of the world with their words, the doctors and nurses who volunteer at free clinics and around the world, even the celebrities who use their fame to change the way we see the plight of mankind. Heroes are the ones who stand up to bullies, who right the wrongs, who remind us that each of us has the opportunity to stand amongst them, to join them, to put our capes on, whether crushed velvet, satin, polyester or sackcloth, and be heroes ourselves.
However, I do still swoon over a man in uniform…just a little left over childhood I guess.
Hellish Behavior 