He Wanted to Be a Hero, Not a Volunteer.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Heroes, Short Story, Society, America, Satire

Photo by Javier García on Unsplash

He wanted to be a hero, not a volunteer. Volunteers didn’t have special skills. They were hands moving something along a line — they meant well, but were just normal people with nothing else to do.

He wanted to be a hero, not a doctor. Doctors had to spend years in school, they had to apply…he might be rejected and have to settle for a doctor-adjacent role, how humiliating. And all those professions were wrapped up in lawsuits and red tape. He would have to take an oath, learn procedures, follow them, and be subject to all kinds of reviews, criticisms, and scrutiny.

He wanted to be a hero, not a cop. Cops were getting bad press lately. He didn’t want that kind of attention. He wanted to be a hero, not a donor. He wanted to be a hero, not a soldier. He didn’t want to have to defend his choices, face real danger, or try to change something that was corrupt. He didn’t want to have to have his blood tested and measured, and possibly be told that he was no good.

He wanted to be a hero, not a lawyer. Lawyers moved in gray areas. They could make a lot of money and be disliked, or they could be public servants and be disliked by the very people they were trying to save.

He wanted to save people from a burning building instead of preventing the fire. He wanted to be magical, chosen at 10 by an owl with a letter.

He wanted to fly in and catch a woman who just happened to be beautiful. He could save ugly people, sure, if the pretty girl was watching.

He wanted to be heroic, but he didn’t want to care. Anything that wasn’t being a hero was a waste of time. Wrapping gifts for kids he would never know, kids who would never give him credit, just being a moving hand with tape — now, what good was that? He didn’t want to give credit to Santa. He wanted people to know — It was him.

He wanted to be a hero, without fighting for anything in particular, learning anything in particular, or offering his unskilled hands. He wanted a statue named after him, but he didn’t want to help erect it.

He wanted to be a hero, not a politician. Everyone knew this system was ruined from the inside, and could not be repaired, anyway. He could stand on top of the rubble, maybe, and wave a flag.

He wanted to be a hero, not an artist — artists could be rejected so easily; his work ignored if no one understood his genius.

He wanted to be a hero, with a hero’s duties: Save someone immediately from suicide, put them down and let them figure out how to pay for their own cancer treatments. Save someone from overdosing, prop them up and tell them they need therapy. Save a little girl from a hurricane, and send her to the church so they can build her a new home.

He wanted to be chosen and godly, with the superpowers of strength and good timing, too valuable to be wasted on time-consuming, repetitive, years-long work. He was too beautiful to be stuck in a hospital or a nursing home, day after day, dispensing medication and being yelled at by the elderly. He was too fabulous for the mundane nature of love.

He wanted to marry the prostitute and turn her into a kept woman, and then he wanted to keep on dating, find another woman to save, and save, and save again — the feeling of rescuing not unlike the rush of an orgasm.

He wanted to be a hero like a firework, burning brilliantly, then disappearing, the ineffective, transient, but easily forgotten star of the show — Something that looked nice, but when you thought about it, really, did it do much of anything at all?