I’m feeling whiny today. My head hurts. My knees hurt. I ate some prunes with my breakfast this morning. I fear that I am turning into Benjamin Button.
And, thus, I turn once again to the random topic generator.
Today’s topic is heroes. And I mean the actual kind and not the TV show that appears to be itching to join CSI in all of its many form on the illustrious “kicked out of Hope’s season passes” list.
What makes a hero? And, more specifically, who are my heroes?
I like my heroes like I like my indie rock allusions. Esoteric. And maybe just a little bit clever. Also, kindof defiant. But mostly, esoteric. My heroes, in no particular order, are:
- Hugh Thompson Jr. Thompson was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. He positioned his helicopter in between a bunch of US soldiers and the innocent villagers that they were slaughterin during the My Lai Massacre. It’s hard to come up with words that convey what exactly it meant for Thompson to do what he did. Basically, he intervened to stop something that he knew in his heart was wrong, orders and fellow soldiers be damned. He risked a court martial for what he did but he saved a lot of lives. A true hero if ever there was one. If you’ll excuse me, I believe that I have something in my eye.
- Dwight Eisenhower. Ok, not so esoteric. Also, an odd choice for a lefty liberal such as myself. But, I’ve read parts of his memoirs and the man was a genius. And he sure as hell wasn’t afraid to tell it like he saw it. Plus, you have to love someone who warned us all about the military-industrial complex and said things like, “God help this country when somebody sits at this desk who doesn’t know as much about the military as I do.” He died before I was born, but I like Ike.
- Iqbal Masih. A former child bonded laborer (that’s pretty much a fancy term for someone who is basically a slave), Iqbal was sold by his parents at the age of four for the equivalent of $12. He escaped at the age of eleven and, instead of trying to put it all behind him and live a normal life, he worked tirelessly to help free other children like himself. He was murdered at the age of twelve for his activism. A school in Quincy, MA took his cause up and has raised a lot of money over the years and used it to build schools in Pakistan.
There are some others, but these are the first few that I came up with. I’m inspired by all of them.
Who are your heroes?
