Tag: ordinary heroes

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Spider-Man: Romecoming

It’s a Marvel after all these years, but I am still an unabashed Spider-Fan. And that’s true whether the man behind the mask is Peter Parker, Miles Morales … or Mattia Villardita.

If you don’t recognize that last name, don’t worry; you haven’t missed the box office smash “Spider-Man: Far From Rome.” Mattia Villardita is a man from northern Italy who visits sick children in hospitals dressed as the superhero webslinger. During the pandemic, that even extended to organizing video calls for pediatric patients, delivering Spidey-pizzas to them, and organizing a kids’ play area in his home town’s hospital.

It’s been a colorful way to help others,  and recently it’s gotten him international recognition. Photos of Spider-Man receiving a thank-you from Pope Francis on June 23 and then giving the Pope a mask of his own rocketed around the internet… to the amazement of Mattia, who didn’t learn of his applause until later, since, as the Irish Times noted, the Spider-Man costume didn’t have room to carry a phone.

“To tell you the truth,” he told the Irish Times, “I expected that this meeting could spark curiosity, but not that it would go all over the world.”

Unlike Mattia, I’m not surprised at all.

If ever there was a superhero for all of us, right here, right now, it’s the webhead.

I latched onto Spidey as a kid, buoyed by comics and games and episodes of “The Electric Company.” It was a neat fit – a young hero with a quick sense of humor and a mind that worked faster than his web-shooters. As I reached my teen years, I even had a bit of a Peter Parker look myself, albeit with blue eyes instead of the traditional brown hidden behind the mask.

But it didn’t take me long to see what really made his heart beat behind those red-and-blue long johns. And what makes him still work today.

Then and now, he’s one of us.

Superman routinely saves the planet. Spidey’s had his moments, but spends most of his time with more local problems (as befits “your neighborhood friendly Spider-Man”).

Batman has the resources of a billionaire to help Gotham, both in and out of costume. Spider-Man sometimes struggles to make the rent.

Wonder Woman fought to become a champion, Spider-Man chose to become one when he saw how badly he’d screwed up.

He goes into battle scared and covers it with jokes. He’s got troubles of his own, but doesn’t let it stop him from helping someone else.

Flawed. Limited. Struggling. And still trying to help.

That’s us. Even if we’re a little less flamboyant in how we cover our mouth and nose.

That’s the family friend who visits because they heard the lawn mower was broken … and then stays to help tame a backyard that had become Wild Kingdom.

It’s the daycare helper who’s in demand to read again and again because “You do the voices!”

It’s the steady hand on the trembling shoulder, offering comfort at a time when there’s nothing else to give.

It’s the realization that we’re all responsible for each other. And that if we each do what we can, however small it might seem, it can make a difference.

Even without a Papal photograph to prove it.

I hope Mr. Villardita keeps up the good work. I hope we all do. We may not be able to climb a wall or swing between skyscrapers, but together, we can spin up a super amount of help.

And True Believers, that’s a world-wide web worth having. 

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Double-0 My!

As the first flakes of Longmont’s snow season crept to the ground, Leroy Brown stood ready for action.

That may sound a little incongruous for Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, the ace child detective of Idaville (as opposed to Jim Croce’s ill-fated gambler). But for our new-ish brown Hyundai of the same name, its moment had clearly arrived. The heater roared. The engine hummed. And the newly-attached license plate declared its tough-guy status to the world.

Or at least, the last three digits of said license plate.

Leroy Brown was now agent 009.

As you might imagine, the prospect of our car now being part of the British Secret Service has inspired much hilarity from friends and family, especially when we all considered whether the Q Branch Option Package might be installed. (For the record, there’s no smoke screen and no oil slick, which probably wouldn’t pass emissions tests in Colorado, anyway.) But among the shared laughter, one friend introduced a note of reality – well, cinematic reality, anyway.

“As I recall, 009 suffers an unenviable fate in the Bond canon …”

Hmm.

For those who aren’t deeply familiar with the series, the James Bond movies do have an agent 009. A few, in fact, but the one who gets the most screen time appears in the opening minutes of “Octopussy,” fleeing an East Berlin circus in a clown suit while chased by a pair of knife-throwing twins. (You kind of had to be there.) Fighting back hard against his pursuers, he’s mortally wounded and knocked into a river … but still survives long enough to stagger to the British Embassy and deliver, with his dying breath, the Faberge’ egg that kicks off the rest of the plot.

So, OK, you could argue that it’s an ill-omened number.  But I liked it better than ever.

This was a double-0 agent to identify with.

Everyone knows James Bond, agent 007, the handsome expert on a dozen plot-relevant subjects, who makes the ladies swoon and always has the right gadget to get out of a tough situation. Bond walks through life with expensive clothes, expensive cars, and a plot armor that guarantees he’ll always come out on top in the end, even if many of his lovers and associates aren’t so lucky.

That’s not most of us.

Most of us, I suspect, are a little closer to 009. Struggling against situations that we’re not really prepared for. Having to constantly keep moving to keep from being overwhelmed. Fearing that one mistake or bit of bad luck will bring everything crashing down. Maybe even feeling a little ridiculous while doing it.

And yet, still doing what we need to do, with everything we’ve got in us.

That, too, is a hero. Much more of one than Commander Bond, in fact.

And it’s a heroism we see every day.

Maybe it’s holding a life together in the face of physical or mental challenges … or a family together with finances and nerves strained to the limit … or facing the world while the heart quietly screams for someone who’s been lost. It may be any of a million other situations – the details are personal, individual, private.

But the strength shown is one that speaks to us all.

So Leroy Brown, agent 009? Absolutely. In fact, it’s an honor, one that I’m happy to carry on behalf of all the 009s out there.

It’s a bond. Universal bond.

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In the Mirror

I know I’m at the end of a very long line, but I still have to say it. Thank you, Charles Ramsey.

In case you missed it – and if you did, where were you? – Ramsey is the Cleveland man who helped rescue three women that had been held prisoner by his neighbor for a decade. As he was eating lunch next door, he heard one of the women screaming for help, ran to see what was happening and, with another neighbor’s help,  broke in a door to find and free the ladies.

That alone was sure to put him in every headline in America. But it was his humility afterward that lit up the Internet from Honolulu to Bangor, Maine. No, not a hero, he said. No, he didn’t need a reward; give it to the victims.

“I got a job anyway,” Ramsey told Anderson Cooper. “Just went and picked it up, paycheck.”

That sealed it.

It’s strange, the way we can hold someone we’ve never met to our hearts. Sometimes it’s for incredible nerve under fire, like Captain “Sully” Sullenberger safely landing a crippled airliner on the Hudson River. Sometimes it’s for endurance in an impossible situation, like the miners in Chile three years ago. Once in a while, the sentiment gets betrayed and turns to outrage – remember “Balloon Boy?”

But the warmest reception of all may go to the ones like Ramsey. Ordinary people who, for a moment, did the right thing.

The ones who could have been us.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: we have a strange turn of mind when it comes to the very good and the very bad. The actions of a Mother Teresa or an Adolf Hitler exist on a scale that boggles our minds: “I could never be that,” many of us say, with either awe or relief.

It’s not true, of course. They, too, were human, however much we might want to deny it in the case of a certain Austrian. Their actions could be another’s actions, given will and opportunity; as John Lennon put it, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”

But with someone like Mr. Ramsey, it’s just a little easier to believe.

Maybe we can’t see ourselves ministering to the poor of Calcutta. But we can see ourselves startled out of an ordinary day, called over to help a neighbor. It’s the sort of thing many of us have done many a time under far less dramatic circumstances.

And if those circumstances suddenly became extraordinary – well, most of us know we’ll never be Rambo or James Bond. But a neighbor in need doesn’t need James Bond. They need you.

Simple actions, kindly taken. They make all the difference in the world.

It can be argued endlessly whether you can call that kind of thing “heroism.” Frankly, the debate doesn’t really matter. The right thing is the right thing, regardless of the label; a helping hand is what it is.

It doesn’t take a hero. Just a heart.

And when we see something like the Ramsey rescue, it lifts us all up for a little bit. Yes. I could do that. That could be me.

It’s not a bad reminder to have.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight – welcome home. You’ve been through hell; may your trials from this point on be lighter.

Charles Ramsey – thank you. For being a neighbor. For being a friend. For reminding the rest of us that the right thing is always in reach.

That’s a reward worth remembering.