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HERO |
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or |
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MATTSCREW CRIES LIKE A SLAPPED BABY |
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It's a hot day. |
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I hate the heat. Even at 5.30am, it's fucking hot. |
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It's a well-documented fact that of all the things I hate, and by hate, I mean frickin' loathe, the heat is one of the worst. |
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I'm not equipped for the summer, as I will attest to in front of strangers on trains. I'm overweight, sensitive to sunlight, and short-tempered. Not the best time of year for me, this. I get hot, frustrated, hotter, angry, and then have go and have a little lie down. |
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So forgive me for the short View this time. What with the retrofit of the site you're reading now, and everything else, it's been a long, hard day. |
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I've been thinking about my age recently, as you might have noticed from previous columns. I think about that sort of thing a lot. How time passes, and what that means. I woke up shrieking today at the prospect of my own death. |
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I don't do that every day. But sometimes, I suspectI have reason to feel the pressure of Ol' Bastard Time. |
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I should be doing something more constructive with my time than this. I should be earning a living. Or at least killing time with something a bit better than staying up all night writing these...hmm...things |
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I should be getting back on the horse. I should be out there, getting my life back.
I shoould be getting l - - but I digress. |
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It's Superheroes. |
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Try as I might, I can't help but look at life through the eyes of someone raised to believe in superheroes. |
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Or, as some people have called them, "gaudily-clad fascists." |
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Look, I'm not a simpleton. I know they're not real (except in the most generous sense of the word). But instead of getting on my case about it, why aren't people mourning that fact? |
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There's nothing I'd rather be in the world than a superhero. And yeah, it's pathetic, I know. But damnit, it's my dream.
If I were a superhero, I'd'a had my first Secret Crisis by now. I might have met my Evil Twin.
I would have refused membership in Super Hero Albion or whatever, but still stuck around enough to save their asses from Doctor Cocknocker and his Legion of Monophyletic Crows.
I'd'a nearly slipped up, and given my secret identity away at Morning Coffee by burning a hole in a nice girls blouse with my Neutrino Lech-o-Vision.
I might be happier than I am. But probably not.
I might have been kicked out of Super Hero Albion for leaving my boots in the fridge a smidge too long.
My Evil Twin might have ended up being a better hero than I am.
It might have been my Bladder-Evacuating Vision, instead.
But I'm getting off the point. |
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You don't need to dress up in a pair of your Nan's old tights to be a hero (in fact, I'd'a thought it would have been a positive boon to not turn up to Hero Auditions in a pair of nasty-ass WWII support hose *shudder*). |
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I know this. I know it.
We're reminded, day after day after sodding day, about those who have gone before. The Mahatma. The Reverend Doctor. X. Smilin' Jack Donut (Kennedy: see the work of Eddie Izzard for more on why he should rightly be remembered for calling himself a Donut). So many more, regular, decent people. People who made a difference to our lives. Pasteur. Fellow Shrewsbrarian, Fleming. Faraday. Shakespeare. Potter. Kirby.. Thinkers. Dreamers Carers. Heroes, all.
And I wish I could be worthy of being part of their number.
But I'm frightened.
Because, with a few exceptions, the good ones are all dead.
And I'm too frightened to risk that sacrifice.
I'm scared that, in order to help people, I might have to risk myself. Not just in any great way: I've chickened out of dodgy situations in the past on a lot of scales, from shying away from a friend who needed me out of some idea that my other friends wouldn't approve (I was 15, as if that could be an excuse), to being paralysed whilst watching a mugger try to rob a little girl of her bike in broad daylight. Not to mention the igmominy of being mugged outside a church, again in broad daylight, without even speaking to the little scrote in question. |
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So what is it? Cowardice? An overinflated sense of self-preservation? Apathy?
Am I frightened of helping people in case the Sainted Parents have to go through the pain of losing me? They've laid that one on me before. Not in a Catholic Guilt-y kind of way, to be sure, but it's stuck.
What kind of superhero would worry about his mother finding out his secrets, where before the mask, there were none?
(well, actually, that would be Spider-Man, but you get the picture)
What else is it, that keeps me back? Laziness? Certainly, I'm a slothful person at the best of times, but is that all.
No. I do feel an urge to help people. I must have been corrupted by all those comics. |
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Does whatever a spider can, except shoot webs out his ass. Not even Dominos could make me do that... |
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Maybe that's why I ended up with the Trollop...with Anna...on my case last year. The Knight in Shining Armour had to have his Damsel. I had to be the shoulder, the crutch, the carer.
The dickhead. |
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Sometimes, I swear, I must have Chicken Soopa Noodles for brains. |
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I suppose it worked out, in the end, if you don't count the money and time I wasted on her, before it went pear-shaped. I saved her life, quite literally, at least twice (seven hours in A&E, trying to stop her falling asleep after an overdose, is not the best way to spend a day where you start it by spilling Phenol all over the place while handling biohazardous man-juice).
Surely that's gotta be worth something?
I couldn't save her from her monsters, I suppose...but now, I'm sharing too much. |
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Other people go out and do good. Not in some Grand, Noble, Epic way, no. But in the only way that matters: the way that actually does some good. |
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They're the teachers, the good cops, the doctors. The politicians who believe, who don't want high office.
They're the ladies in the Oxfam shop, selling stale-smelling books to people like me to raise money for a kid to not shit himself drinking water.
They're the people who talk to the guys selling the 'G'Issue, instead of mumbling and walking away, with or without the magazine. |
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Not that I'm saying that people who don't do these things aren't heroic. I'm constantly being amazed by the Little Heroisms I encounter all the time. |
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It's just...I wish I was brave enough to do more. And I have ideas, too. I know how I want to change the world. I care what goes on. I don't want a certain person to put the interests of a certain place above the interests of the rest of a certain planet. I don't want the people of this land to war upon each other anymore. To be honest, I can think of better things to do. |
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(And, no, it isn't Mars...) |
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But I'm too scared. |
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Scared of failing. Scared of getting hurt. Scared of anything you could mention, to be honest. |
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So, despite the knowledge that I've done stuff to be proud of, that'll live on after me, and despite the knowledge that "you don't have to be a great man, you just have to be a man," I distract myself with cartoonish, broad-stroke heroism, and tales of shining knights and dark detectives. I immerse myself in tales of friendship across the bounds of death, and the lives of supermen. |
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In my head, I soar as high as I can. |
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So I don't have to admit how small I am. |
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Matthew Craig, July 30th 2001 |
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Postscript: life isn't that bad, really. Wrestling on the telly and my dead dog on the internet. |
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It'll do. |
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For tonight, it'll do. |
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Until that radioactive spider comes a'knocking... |
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CHOMP! |
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