THE SUPER-COOLEST SUPERHEROES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

It's a little known fact that the concept of heroism was originally derived in the United States of America. Years back, there was a man from New Amsterdams-ville-berg-town, Milwaukee, New Brunswick, Ohio, called Arthur Stanley Jefferson Kubrick O'Smith. By all accounts, Lenny, as he was commonly called, was a pretty decent chap, until one day he was rectally impregnated by an irradiated lemming. As soon as that happened... he... he... he... uhhhm? Wait a minute! I just realized something! That's all a load of old kack! The concept of heroism can never derive from any given country. It derives from...





...us, the human race, as we are the primary species who can comprehend the holistic notions of truth, justice, and yeah, that sort of thing! Case in point, sometime back, in the mid-nineties, I was walking down the street to see if the bank still had any of my cash left, when suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I spotted something I thought was really-really weird.

Just adjacent to where I was standing was a house, a common day conventional family house, and from inside it, I noticed a strange strobing effect coming from one of the rooms. At first, I thought maybe some kid was playing a video game on his TV, what with the way the light emanated on and off, almost as if it were blinking. But the strange thing about this, is that the longer I looked at the light, the more I noticed that the light wasn't blinking in a uniform manner. Worst still, this light came with smoke, plenty of smoke.

Yes. That's correct. This house was on fire. 

As soon as I realized what was happening I knocked on a house nearby and informed them of my suspicions. Jerry, the man who's door I knocked on, then told me that there was a Muslim family living inside that house, and that sometimes they light a candle to honor, well, whatever it is they honor.

In a flash Jerry called to his wife, Margret, so she could call up the fire brigade while we both instinctively made our way towards the burning building. Panic stricken, Jerry called out the family's name, hoping that one of them would be able to reply. But no, they didn't, none of them did, despite our best efforts to knock down their front door and try to find who was inside. 

Problem was, the smoke was so intense and the fire was so hot, we were unprepared to do anything apart from scream and hope for the best. In vein Jerry tried to make his way up the stairs while I headed towards the living-room downstairs, but again, no, the fire was winning; it was beating us with every lick of its flame. 

Seven minutes later the fire brigade arrived and escorted both Jerry and myself out of the danger zone. Five minutes after that, they retrieved the dead bodies of two young children holding onto their mother and father. From what the crime scene officers told us a few days later, it turns out that one member of the family lit a candle earlier in the day, and forgot to put it under the glass casing it's usually housed in. The candle accidentally caught fire to a piece of chiffon close by. The chiffon then caught the nearby sofa on fire. And so on, and so on. 

Now I'm sure you're asking yourself, 'Hey, what gives? I thought this was going to be a fun story about heroism! Especially since I led into it in such a silly manner!'. But alas, no, no it's not. This is just my way of showing you that being a hero isn't all about colored uniforms or fighting bad-guys.

Every now and then I bump into Jerry on the streets. He's a vagrant now. A homeless person. He blames himself for not being able to save his friends all those years ago, regardless of what we did. Day in, day out, Jerry drinks away his woes, forgetting about his own family in the process. My Mum sometimes sees his ex-wife at the gym, and she basically fills in the blanks on what trying to be a hero did to Jerry.

It's a shame. A bloody shame. Jerry doesn't deserve this, and neither does the dead Muslim family either. But then again, as I said at the start of this piece, the concept of heroism can never derive from any given country. It derives from us, the human race, as we are the primary species who can comprehend the holistic notions of truth, justice, and yeah, that sort of thing. Sometimes we can, anyway.

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