Little m Long a

What do I think?  Sounds to me like the bees are gone.  I haven’t got a clue.  However, the article ended with several exit lines from various movies and the one from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” made me smile as some of my earliest and best childhood memories came flooding back.  Man, I wanted to be the Sundance Kid.  Little did I know that the person I had chosen to be my very first idol was an outlaw bank/train robber.  Hell, I was just four and a half years old, my boy Zane’s age. To me, he was just about the coolest person I had ever seen.  He got to shoot guns and pistols, he got to ride horses and he had some really neat boots.

So, as is quite often the case, I took the mind journey from icon to icon, hero to hero reviving memories of what I now believe were some of the best days of my life.  I soon came to realize that I was never going to be a cowboy.  I lived well within the city limits and although we had what I felt was an enormous backyard, it would never be home to a trusty steed.  That, and my mom threw away my Sundance boots.  There were, as I recall, a few tears shed.  What am I saying? I’m not proud.  I cried like a school girl.  I had worn those boots every day for at least 2 years, they were a part of me and it hurt to see them go.  So I moved on.

“Steve Austin:  astronaut.  A man barely alive.  Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.  We have the technology…”—”The Six Million Dollar Man.”  Who didn’t want to be Steve?  He was fast, strong, could see for miles and he was tough.  A real he-man.  And he was an astronaut.  The guy reaked cool!  We would play out episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man” in our yards for hours on end and if we weren’t done by dinner and bedtime, we’d pick right up where we left off the next morning.  My best friend’s older brother had the best imagination in the world.  He’s gone now and I think about him from time to time but no matter what triggers the memories, I always go back to our days saving the world as Steve Austin.

“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”—”The Incredible Hulk.”  Two words:  Lou Ferrigno.  The guy was a monster! Huge!  I didn’t care so much for the tv show but couldn’t wait to see him rip his shirt and pants each week and then go on some superhuman rampage.  I guess at this point in my life I kind of moved from admiring the character to actually seeing the person behind the role, finding some emulatable quality in them and trying somehow to fit that quality into my own life.

I believe at this point in my life I also began to recognize the fallibility of just about every person I had chosen to place on a pedestal.  In one way or another, one after another, all of my heroes began to manifest flaws. Some were as insignificant as a minor physical imperfection while others were simply unimaginable lapses in character.  One by one they all fell and with them my faith in the whole hero system.  Seriously.  Ask me today who my heroes are.  I’ve got nothing.  I can not think of a single person I wish I was more like, no one I want to emulate.

Some would say, “Well, that’s a good thing.  Shows you’ve got a healthy self confidence.”  I’m not so sure.  Maybe I’m just too critical and need to lighten up.  I’m not looking for heroes anymore.  Really, I gave up. But, I’ve got kids now who are going to be moving through these exact processes of placing people with whom they come into contact on pedestals, trying to emulate them as they grow and mature.   That’s a struggle for me.  I fear for them when they come to realize, like me, that heroes are just ordinary people with warts and zits and uncontrolable problems with substance abuse and in the end, they’re going to let you down.

Should I expose my kids heroes before they have invested too much of their tiny, impressionable hearts preventing the inevitable breakdown or just let them figure it all out on their own?  I suppose until I get it figured out I’ll just keep plants on my pedestals.  Daisies are a whole lot easier to replace.