years and years, feeding their
already morbidly obese egos, until one day some fact about them
comes to light or they start to lose their game and their
sycophantic devotees evaporate like a mirage. That’s when the
tabloids and the gossip shows (and, increasingly, the actual news)
get ahold of them. The Green Goblin from 2002’s Spiderman was
among the lamest realizations of an iconic comic book villain in
cinematic history, but I always found myself agreeing with his
contention that the one thing people love more than a hero is to
see a hero fall.
And before your criticize me for referencing superheroes
twice in one section, I’d remind you that I’m about as nerdy as a
person can be. As a teenager, acne accounted for more of my body
mass than penis did. Besides, this is a chapter about heroes—and
super ones are the most idealized of all.
This notion, by the way, fits perfectly into my idea that
athletes are our ultimate heroes. Who could ever be more athletic
than superheroes? They can run faster than speeding bullets and
leap tall buildings in a single bound! The superheroes are the
home team and all the supervillains are from rival schools. It fits
together eerily well—at least in my mind.
I don’t know if we can choose our heroes or if who we
admire is inexorably linked to our own values—wherever those
are derived from—but it seems to me that we should have deep
admiration for anyone who is especially talented at what they do.
Why can’t a man who can eat more hotdogs than most people be
a small-time hero? My stepfather is an excellent contractor and
carpenter—why does that skill entitle him to less hero worship
than a guy who can pluck a guitar well? Don’t we need roofs over
our heads and four walls to hold them up as much as we need
music to reverberate off of those walls?
Am I being too idealistic? I had better stop in that case.
Sorrow & Flatulence
“TJ, there’s something seriously wrong with your father.”
I’d be lying if I said panic was my first reaction to those
words. The sentence, and its meaning, made the room I was
occupying seem larger. It made me feel smaller.
I rose from my chair, jogged briskly to the bedroom where
my father lay moaning inhumanly. His face was purple, his eyes
glassy.
We turned him over. His beige pants were drenched with
urine. “Oh god,” shouted my stepmom. “He’s pissed himself.”
At that moment, we all knew he was going to die.
It was the unspoken obvious fact that filled the room like a
cloud of noxious gas. “Oh god, he’s pissed himself” was grief-
stricken wife speak for: “Of fuck, he’s a goner!”
We—me, my brother and my stepmom—managed to get
him onto the floor. She pumped his chest and blew into his mouth.
I called 9-1-1. The breaths she gave him seemed to bypass his
lungs entirely, simply inflating his stomach instead. They came
out in little bursts of cartoonish snoring that would have sounded
funny under different circumstances. Hell, they’re kind of funny
even in retrospect, albeit in a dark and haunting way.
Paramedics arrived quickly and worked on him for what
seemed liked 15-minutes but was probably a considerable shorter
period of time. They managed to restore his pulse. They were all
very casual. It was nothing they hadn’t seen a hundred times
before--just another family destroyed, just another person sucked
into oblivion, just another day at work.
I freely admit to hating them to this day, despite knowing
that detachment is an important part of their job.
We stewed in the hospital’s waiting room while doctors
performed surgery. We were told that my father had suffer a
massive heart-attack.
The waiting room was filled with people wanting to be seen
for minor illnesses. A black woman kept shouting how outrageous
it was that she had to wait so long for treatment for her sickle-cell.
“I know these white people in here ain’t got no
already morbidly obese egos, until one day some fact about them
comes to light or they start to lose their game and their
sycophantic devotees evaporate like a mirage. That’s when the
tabloids and the gossip shows (and, increasingly, the actual news)
get ahold of them. The Green Goblin from 2002’s Spiderman was
among the lamest realizations of an iconic comic book villain in
cinematic history, but I always found myself agreeing with his
contention that the one thing people love more than a hero is to
see a hero fall.
And before your criticize me for referencing superheroes
twice in one section, I’d remind you that I’m about as nerdy as a
person can be. As a teenager, acne accounted for more of my body
mass than penis did. Besides, this is a chapter about heroes—and
super ones are the most idealized of all.
This notion, by the way, fits perfectly into my idea that
athletes are our ultimate heroes. Who could ever be more athletic
than superheroes? They can run faster than speeding bullets and
leap tall buildings in a single bound! The superheroes are the
home team and all the supervillains are from rival schools. It fits
together eerily well—at least in my mind.
I don’t know if we can choose our heroes or if who we
admire is inexorably linked to our own values—wherever those
are derived from—but it seems to me that we should have deep
admiration for anyone who is especially talented at what they do.
Why can’t a man who can eat more hotdogs than most people be
a small-time hero? My stepfather is an excellent contractor and
carpenter—why does that skill entitle him to less hero worship
than a guy who can pluck a guitar well? Don’t we need roofs over
our heads and four walls to hold them up as much as we need
music to reverberate off of those walls?
Am I being too idealistic? I had better stop in that case.
Sorrow & Flatulence
“TJ, there’s something seriously wrong with your father.”
I’d be lying if I said panic was my first reaction to those
words. The sentence, and its meaning, made the room I was
occupying seem larger. It made me feel smaller.
I rose from my chair, jogged briskly to the bedroom where
my father lay moaning inhumanly. His face was purple, his eyes
glassy.
We turned him over. His beige pants were drenched with
urine. “Oh god,” shouted my stepmom. “He’s pissed himself.”
At that moment, we all knew he was going to die.
It was the unspoken obvious fact that filled the room like a
cloud of noxious gas. “Oh god, he’s pissed himself” was grief-
stricken wife speak for: “Of fuck, he’s a goner!”
We—me, my brother and my stepmom—managed to get
him onto the floor. She pumped his chest and blew into his mouth.
I called 9-1-1. The breaths she gave him seemed to bypass his
lungs entirely, simply inflating his stomach instead. They came
out in little bursts of cartoonish snoring that would have sounded
funny under different circumstances. Hell, they’re kind of funny
even in retrospect, albeit in a dark and haunting way.
Paramedics arrived quickly and worked on him for what
seemed liked 15-minutes but was probably a considerable shorter
period of time. They managed to restore his pulse. They were all
very casual. It was nothing they hadn’t seen a hundred times
before--just another family destroyed, just another person sucked
into oblivion, just another day at work.
I freely admit to hating them to this day, despite knowing
that detachment is an important part of their job.
We stewed in the hospital’s waiting room while doctors
performed surgery. We were told that my father had suffer a
massive heart-attack.
The waiting room was filled with people wanting to be seen
for minor illnesses. A black woman kept shouting how outrageous
it was that she had to wait so long for treatment for her sickle-cell.
“I know these white people in here ain’t got no
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