Extra Ordinary

I am not a fan of Jose Rizal or Ninoy Aquino. There, I said it.

It’s not them, it’s me. Like Jesus to The Boy raised by wolves, they just aren’t real to me. They might as well be Spiderman and Harry Potter.

If you line up the heroes in my life in front of a panel of judges for heroic scrutiny there might be nothing to find. There might be nothing pretty to look at. No impressive physical specimens. No dashing charming debonair gentlemen among them. No prodigies or genius-level IQ’s. No inventors, scientists, or CEO’s. No signs of wealth or power – and no connections to wealth and power. No glowing resumes with layers of education. They have started – and belong to – no foundations. No planet-changing causes drive them.

If you sent them out to plant explosives on a meteor about to hit the Earth, you would look at them, shake your head, and prepare for the worst. There is nothing in my roster of heroes that indicates any degree of heroic ability. There is nothing to indicate that they are in any position to save the world, or that they have been prepared (or care) for such a task.

I am most impressed by them precisely because they were not prepped for life in the wild wide world. They have been given no privileges or opportunities other than the fact that they are here at all. They are not even properly equipped to be out here, yet here they are doing just as well as you and I...but happier.

While we dread the future and the consequences of our past, my heroes wake up every day into a life that gives them everything they need, and they happily accept. My heroes learned everything they knew because they wanted to...or had to. They learned to swim because they wanted to retrieve a coin that fell into the water – or because they themselves fell off a boat and had to live. Me? I went to Lozada swimming school and learned in a pool with an instructor an arm’s length away at all times.

The heroes in my life are the ones I see every day. The ones on the streets enjoying the roof over their heads which we call the heavens. The ones I see running around flying kites by the train tracks when I look out my apartment window. The ones I see relaxing on a makeshift hammock under the chassis of an eighteen-wheeler. The ones who rap on my car window smiling at me because they know me by face. And when they call out my name – “Kuya!” – it makes me feel like I could be their hero.

From the other side of my car window, I see very few reasons for them to be positive, but they are the ones with the big smiles on their faces while I squirm uncomfortably in my cushioned seat and airconditioned environment. They do not know that it might be impolite to talk to strangers – to put their faces so close to mine – because everyone is the same to them. They do not care about the grease on their clothing because they are not burdened with vanity. They do not know the meaning of squalor because they are not burdened with unnecessary vocabulary.

My hero is the street urchin I often see as I drive around the Alabang Town Center area. He could be 8 years old, or he could be 11, and he sells car wipes. I’ve bought so much from him, he has taken to selling me car wipes even when I am not in a car. Yes, we’ve transacted countless times– and it’s not because I keep losing my car wipes. What I am really paying him for is the little conversations that come with the car wipes: something he saw that he thought I would be interested in for whatever reason. He asks me questions about my day, where I am going, and why. I pay him for the effect his perennially smiling face and lack of inhibition has on my life. One day I should pay him to ask for his name.

My hero is Marlon and his little sister May, who hang around outside my wife’s Art Gallery. It boggles my mind that these kids with no internet and no shoes never look bored or unhappy. I’ve seen them tape a plastic bag to a stick and fly it like a kite. I’ve seen them play with a cardboard box. I’ve seen them just sit at the steps outside the Gallery and talk to each other till sundown, when their balut-vendor parents yell at them and they have to run off.

My hero is a kid only known as “Bulldog” – probably because of his less-than-photogenic features. He hangs around a very busy and congested bazaar called “Ruins” in BF Paranaque, and his calling in life is to always make sure I have a parking space. He never sells me anything or asks for money, but he innately knows that if he helps me, I will display some sort of gratitude. Fortunately for him, there is a Jollibee near Ruins. He gives me the opportunity to feed him with my gratitude and a cheeseburger.

Only once did he ever try to sell me something, and I wondered about his career-shift from the service industry to sales and marketing. He approached me and asked me to buy a sampaguita because he needed some money fast. I sensed an urgency in his voice, and a hint of concern on his normally care-free brows.

No, his mother was not sick, and his father was not in jail. His emergency was that he was going to school for the first time in his life. He only had a few days left, and he did not want to go barefoot because it was a long walk. He needed money to buy slippers.

I had developed a familiarity with Bulldog, but still wondered if he had been taught the art of the scam and the sob story. I’ve heard a lot of these, and they were all for rugby. This seemed like a new one. I told him I was not going to buy a sampaguita, and I could not give him money for slippers, but if he showed me the pair he was going to purchase, I could get it for him.

This is the part of the conversation where the rugby-boy would say “never mind” or just give me blank stare for saying something that wasn’t on the script. This is the part where he is supposed to run off. Not Bulldog.

Without pausing to think about it, he waved me to follow and sped off barefoot through many rows of tiangges and a couple of alleys into a small mini-mart. He then zipped through the entrance and went directly to an aisle in the back where he picked up a brown pair of slippers that fit him exactly. Not only did his story check out, he knew exactly what he wanted.

Maybe I’m a sucker for buying him the pair of slippers. I did not pay for slippers though. I paid for the unique opportunity to be a part of this child’s power of alchemy. He looked at that ugly brown pair of slippers and said “You will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine!”...

I paid for that moment: for the opportunity to be a hero to my hero.

My heroes may never have a car, a career, or an education. They may have no formal preparation for life and may never fight for an opportunity to change the world. But they change me every day with their power to make something out of nothing.

They take an ambitious result-driven “adult” who is becoming increasingly impossible to please and change him back into a human being who can once again marvel at the gift of life and the wonder of the world.

My heroes are the ones who remind me that there is a God, that there are lilies on the field, and that everything will be alright. They do this without a political platform or televised evangelism. They do this without opposing anybody. They do this without dying violently.

Without word or intent, they manage to save my life every day.