Writings » Some Kind of Hero

Some Kind of Hero

By Lash Leroux at 2008-08-11 | Ridiculous!, Action | Printable version

She thanked me, threw her arms around me, and called me a hero.

No one had ever called me a hero before.  I certainly didn't have the credentials I assumed most heroes possessed.  My only memory of middle school is the time I sharted in Home Ec.  I had to think fast and spent the last thirty minutes of class sewing my shorts into pants.  Needless to say, I was suspended for two weeks.  High school wasn't much better.  I was voted "Most Likely to Spit in Someone's Food" in my senior yearbook.  I dropped out of state college after two years and have worked at Home Depot since.

I guess my heroics didn't start until earlier this week, when I decided I wanted to kill myself.  I knew the hatch to the roof of my apartment building was always unlocked, so I scribbled a quick note to my mom and climbed up the ten foot ladder.  I walked cautiously to the edge and peered over at the sidewalk, twenty-five stories below.  I dropped into a squat position and wept for three days.  On the fourth day, though, the roof heated up to about 150 degrees, and I grew tired of trying to kill myself by starving myself to death on the roof.  I decided it was time to face my fear of spiders like a man.

I turned toward the roof hatch to go after that sick arachnid in my kitchen when a noise caught my attention.  It was a child on the roof of the building next door.  He was tugging fruitlessly at the handle of the door to the rooftop.  It was obviously locked.  I knew that if I didn't do anything, the child would probably be mildly sunburned.  It was time for action.

I jogged back from the edge of the building and then turned to face it.  The edge of the neighboring building was about twenty feet away and ten feet lower than the edge of the roof I was on.  I would have to jump, and it would definitely hurt.  However, my former suicidal status had prepared me mentally and emotionally for self-inflicted pain.  In addition, I was not thinking straight due to dehydration.

I sprinted toward the edge and launched myself into space.  My shirt fluttered behind me as I flailed my arms for balance.  I concentrated on my landing.  I would have to execute a forward roll to disperse the impact.  Then I would smash down that door and save that endangered child.

Unfortunately, I smashed through a window approximately three floors below the roof of the neighboring building.  I landed sitting on some lady's stove before bouncing face first onto the kitchen floor along with a pot of boiling sweet peas.  The lady started to scream, and I wanted to assure her that my intentions were honorable.  However, my ass was pretty thoroughly engulfed in flames at that point, so I settled for sprinting for the door and using my shoulder to end its career.

I made for the emergency staircase and found a fire extinguisher two floors down.  The heat of the moment had caused me to forget about the punk on the roof, so I took the stairs down to the lobby and exited out onto the street.  Almost immediately, I saw an old man climbing into a 1988 Grand Marquis.  I broke into a run and dropkicked the fogy in his diaphragm.

A lady on the street nearby ran up to me.  She had tits out to here.  "Sir," she said, "you just saved my son's life.  If that old man got into that car, he would probably have mistaken the gas for the brake and then for some reason would have steered onto the sidewalk.  He would have run over my son for sure."

She was dead right.  Old people are terrible.  When she called me a hero, I knew it was well-deserved...