Nurse the Hate: Hate the Hero

A friend of mine brought up a very valid point this morning.  He believes the word “hero” is thrown around too much, and to this I heartily agree.  When did everyone become a hero?  If you served in the armed forces, you are now a hero.  If you are a cop, you are now a hero.  A fireman?  Yep, a hero.  In the medical profession?  Also now heroes.  It doesn't even matter what you did or didn't do any more.  If you just showed up in the uniform, it is now politically correct to call everyone a "hero".  I think at this point pretty much everyone but me is a hero, which seems right because I don’t feel like a hero.  While this may by process of elimination make me a victim, I’d rather not dwell on that.

I think everyone started to become “heroes” about the same time all kids received trophies for participating in whatever activity their dopey parents signed them up for.  There has been an entire generation that has had the idea of competition slowly bred out of them.  “We need to make sure no one feels bad, so let’s give the same size trophies to the last place team as the one that won the championship.  That will make sure we teach everyone the lesson that they are all winners no matter what the outcome!  Now let’s have cupcakes!”  While little Billy enjoys his cupcake and trophy we gloss over the fact his baseball team finished last because he is a little pussy that is afraid of the ball and he throws like a seven year old girl with a torn rotator cuff.  Meanwhile little Jimmy, who throws 90 miles an hour with five different arm angles and has a screwball that drops off the fucking table, is munching his cupcake feeling like he got screwed with his duplicate trophy.  Whoa be to him if he complains as a shit storm of “bad sportsmanship” cries will come down on him like a bad dream.

I embrace the idea that those in the armed services are sacrificing for our country, though to be honest there is a large group of folks in the ranks that just plain ran out of options and ended up in that uniform as opposed to a Subway uniform.  The armed services are a large corporation.  There are all kinds working away in that company.  A guy that runs into a crazy ass firefight, pulls his buddies out of harm’s way at unbelievable risk?  That guy is a hero.  A guy working in supply at an Army base in North Carolina that just happens to be serving while we blow up some other country somewhere?  Really?  Do we really have to use the same word as we did with that dude with the balls of steel that saved his fellow servicemen?

My neighbor’s house caught on fire a number of years ago.  The fire truck arrives and a few firemen sprint upstairs into the flames.  Would I have done it?  No fucking way.  Then again, I also didn’t undergo years of training on how to do that and decide to do that as my job.  To those guys it was business as usual.  If one of those firemen sprinted into an unstable house to save a person trapped inside despite the pleas of his fellow fireman who knew that shit was way too risky?  Yeah, that dude is a hero.  It’s not the job that makes you a hero.  It’s the extraordinary actions taken that makes one a hero.