Hero Moments?

Today I had an embarrassing moment. For the first time, I was the last one in the office. After spending an hour entrenched in work, I walked out of my room and noticed all the lights were off and the large security doors were locked. Then I realized that there was a problem. The glass office doors open outward and with the security metal doors locked from the outside, I couldn't move the glass office doors. I was stuck in the office (movie idea: Office Alone?). I thought about what to do. What were my options? I tried to squeeze my hand out the glass doors to try and twist open the lock of the security door, but my hand would barely fit through the small opening that the glass door could open with the security door closed. Maybe I could stay in the office for the night and sleep on a sofa. There was enough food in the office kitchen. Maybe I could call for help. There was no guard in the building on duty at that hour. All I really needed was for someone to open t...

The Gemarah Sanhedrin (9B) relates a story. It once happened that while a Rabbi was delivering a lecture, he noticed a smell of garlic. He said: 'Let him who has eaten garlic go out.' R. Hiyya arose and left; then all the other disciples rose in turn and went out. In the morning R. Simeon, the Rabbi's son, met and asked him: 'Was it you who caused annoyance to my father yesterday?' 'Heaven forbid that such a thing should happen in Israel,' he answered (i.e., he acted with the intention of saving the real offender from humiliation.)  Similarly, once a camp counselor at a sleepaway camp noticed that one of his campers, around age 11, had wet his bed. He knew that this would soon be discovered by the rest of the kids and, the kids would face a humiliation that he would never recover from. The counselor quickly took out a water gun and took the initiative that he wanted the kids to think he was acting crazy. He started squirting down all the beds with water...

The cockroach ran across the bathroom floor and hid in a crevice. I looked around for a weapon, but just found a roll of toilet paper. I stood in the middle of the bathroom ready to react. Then the cockroach crawled out of its crevice and crawled over by the bathtub. It stopped for a moment and didn't move. With all my force, I brought the roll of toilet paper down on top of it. The cockroach flipped over onto its back. Its back legs didn't move, while the front legs flung in the air. I looked around for stronger weapon. I pulled off a wad from the toilet paper to grab the cockroach and put it into the toilet. Then the cockroach flipped over. With its still working front legs, it ran for the crevice under the bathroom door. I tried to catch it, but it slipped away. By the time I opened the door, the cockroach was gone. It got away. Somewhere in the apartment, a wounded cockroach, with two broken back legs, lurked around.

I stood on the curb waiting to cross the street. Two older ladies stood next to me. No cars were coming and I was tempted to just cross, even though it was a red light for crossing. Another guy came up from behind and charged into the street. "He crossed against the red light. What does it matter if there aren't any cars coming," said one old lady to her friend, "once you start crossing against red lights, you'll be cutting corners and cheating on everything." The light turned green and we all crossed the street.

"Please don't get upset," my wife said. "What happened?" "Look around at everyone and see they are healthy and safe," she said, "its  a  miracle." She told me had a n 86 year old woman was in the parking lot near her, and she pressed down hard on the gas instead of the brakes. "She smashed straight into the side of the car." All the kids were with her in the car and felt the impact. Luckily it was in a parking lot, and not on a freeway. I hate these situations. First of all everyone was safe and fine. They lady apologized and gave over all her details. After I hugged everyone, then I thought about calling the insurance company. I hate dealing with insurance companies, as well as lawyers. It's like walking into another dimension. Suddenly you are put on the defensive, even if you are innocent, because they assume everyone in lying. This stresses me out. "The old lady lady said she was happy she hit us," my wife...

Here is a story I overheard. "I have a friend in California. He was living on a farm growing marijuana, and he got into dealing. Since you can go to any state in the US without passing through a checkpoint, he went everywhere to deliver. He filled up a suitcase full of pot and drove out to his 'customers'. "Then he got lazy. Instead of driving out. He started using the US Postal Service to mail himself the stuff at a PO Box, where he went to pick it up. He got bolder and bolder, and sent larger and larger amounts. The season for harvesting and dealing in pot was well known. His shipments wreaked of marijuana smell. So obviously, they opened the packages. "When he came to pick up his packages, the police were there to arrest him. They charged him and booked him. He took a fancy $40,000 lawyer, and he only had a to spend a month in jail. First offense. No priors. And he was out. Lost all the money he made in dealing." 

A burned cake. "Oh I think it's burned," she said, tasting  a piece of the cake, "I guess I was in a rush. What do I do now?" She went to a colleague and discussed the situation. She had a made a cake for her leaving work party. Finally the party took place. She had decorated the cake in the colors and logo of the company. Everyone remarked how creative and well designed the cake was. "Nobody said anything about the taste," she said. She made strength out of weakness.

I got a flat tire on the main highway. I heard the wheel bumping over the asphalt, and knew the tire was completely flat. Pulling over to the shoulder, I got out of the car and confirmed that the tire was flat and needed to be replaced. I hauled out the tire-changing tools and got to work, but the shoulder was so narrow that every time I bent down to turn the lug wrench a car came speeding at me. I was risking my life to change a tire. I put away the tools and turned on the engine and drove as fast as I could. A few minutes up the road was the entry to a large factory. The driveway was large, wide and set far enough away from the road for me to change a tire. I pulled in, with smoke rising from my burning flat tire. As I applied the tools, a security guard from the factory took interest. He saw me strain as I tried to loosen the bolts, getting up on the lug wrench push my full weight down. The bolts didn't move. He stepped forward, abandoning the gate he stood, and quickly ...

We learn a lot about people from the stories told about them after they are gone. An old man that lived in the building next door died a little over a year ago. My wife told our son. "Oh him," my son said, "you know once when I was angry, I slammed the door and ran out of our apartment. I was hiding downstairs near the cars, and he saw me. I think he was waiting for someone to pick him up and drive him somewhere. He looked at me and yelled 'Get back in your house, listen to your mother and father.' And because of him, I ran back inside." She went to comfort the family that was mourning their father. She told this story about the old man next door, and everyone cried. He was a man that cared.

Three years ago, we arrived at the hospital when my wife was already in labor. The security guard let us drive right in to be as close to the entrance as possible. I parked the car and went around to help her out. "No, its too much, I'll have the baby here," she said. I needed to help her out, get her up to the delivery ward, and move the car back out to the parking lot. I tried to reassure her that she could make it, but she wasn't ready to step out of the car. I looked around and saw an old man getting into another car behind us. They had a wheelchair. I asked if they still needed the wheelchair, and they let me take it. I tried to help my wife into the wheelchair. Then an older woman appeared. She helped my wife into the wheelchair. "Where does she need to go?" "Upstairs, second floor, to the delivery room." I moved the car back out to the parking lot. I came upstairs and found my wife in the delivery room. A few minutes later we had a...

Life will go on as long as there is someone to sing, to dance, to tell stories and to listen.  This is a quote from Chief Oren Lyons ,  a Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. He is an everyday hero. And we’re told, as long as there is one to speak and one to listen, one to sing and one to dance, the fight is on. So that is hope. To not give up. To try, and to use reason. Peace Maker said, “I’m going to throw your weapons of war into this hole.” He uprooted that great tree and instructed all the men to bring their weapons of war and to cast them into this hole. That was the first disarmament. And he said, “I’m not going to leave you unprotected and helpless.” And he gave us the great tobacco plant. And he said, “This will be your medium to speak to me when you need to.” And he gave us a very special plant, which we still use, still speak to him with. We believe. And I think as long as we’re doing that, there is...

Looking to sell your home? They say when you add a swimming pool to your house, it doesn't add to the property value but it helps the house sell faster. So also it goes for experience and age. It doesn't necessary make you smarter, but you see the problems faster. And that's the value of experience and age.

I heard a nice insight today. The same hot water that can boil an egg and can also make a potato soft. It's not the hot water that makes the difference, it's the same hot water. But the material that the these items are made from that makes the difference. That's the same thing about life. It's not the outside influences that make us who we are, but are own inner constitution - what we're made of - that's what will determine how those outside influences shape us.

I finished a job interview and called my wife. She said she was nearby in the mall. I quickly found her and looked at my watch. We still had 45 minutes before we had to pick up our little boy from pre-school. "Let's go to the new pancakes restaurant!"  She agreed with no discussion. We ordered the most sweet thing on the menu: a triple chocolate stack of pancakes. Sometimes you just have seize the moment, even for pancakes.

My parking place in our apartment building is empty throughout the day. A woman that comes to visit her elderly mother in the building next door uses our spot (with permission) to park, so as to not get ticketed on the street. One day I came home early, and I pulled into my spot. Then as I was parking the woman pulled in and looked for a place to park. "You can park here in this spot," I said, "I'll park down the street." She blushed and didn't know what to say. The next day I found a note on our car thanking me for letting her park and how touched she was by the consideration.

Hero moments are nice, but might not be the right connecting point. Things that go wrong, could potentially be the basis for a stronger connection. How mistakes get made, form the foundation for building strong interconnections. A quality that most great storytellers have in common is their willingness to tell on themselves, reveal and to share the stories about the time that they just screwed up. Most people listening to our stories don't want to hear about us being a hero and saving the day. It's our frailties that connect us. Our missteps make us interesting. Perhaps out of failure I have been searching to soothe my inner soul through recollections of hero moments, when in fact the entire premise for this blog has in fact been....a misstep.

There was once a time I was walking through a quiet neighborhood late at night. No cars were driving. I could hear the chirp of the crickets in the grass. In the midst of this, I heard a yelp. It wasn't a simple yelp, like an animal making a noise to get attention. It was a yelp of despair. I looked around to where it was coming from. I didn't see anything moving. The yelping continued and grew more desperate. I moved toward a field where the yelping seemed to be the strongest. There was an old rusty barrel. I bent down and looked inside. The yelping echoed loudly inside the barrel. A little puppy was in the barrel. I tried coax him to come out, but he stayed at the very back of the barrel. It was dirty and rusty, I contemplated going in to pick up the puppy. He yelped more. Then I saw that his leg was stuck in the crack in the barrel. Through the crack, the puppy's foot was stuck underneath the barrel. Gently, I rolled the barrel a bit, exposing the larger part of the...

Walking up the street, I heard a scraping across the pavement. I looked up and saw a truck dragging a a leafy branch under its chassis. The car lurched forward and the branch remained firmly lodged underneath. The driver seemed unaware of the large branch he was dragging, eagerly trying to get through the stop sign. I looked around and nobody seemed to notice. I stepped forward and got the driver's attention. Waving to him to wait a moment, I bent down to grab the branch. He looked at me like 'what does this guy want'. I pulled at the branch but it was stuck real good under the truck. I hoped he wouldn't get impatient and put his foot on the gas. Wiggling the branch back and forth, it felt like it was going to rip the metal or scratch the truck. Gently I got the branch to the right angle and pulled it up from under the truck. The driver saw me carrying the branch away and honked twice, waving to me with a thumbs up sign. I dragged the tree branch over to the side...

The people that came to pray at the synagogue were constantly moving chairs and screeching (and driving everyone nuts with the noise!!). The chairs in synagogue made so much noise on the floor that as soon as one person moves, no one could hear anything over it! The legs of the chairs would make the most horrid scraping sound on the tile floor of the synagogue, and it was really loud! Nobody dealt with the issue and nobody had any ingenious ideas on how to quiet the chairs. I've heard about tennis balls for chair legs, but for an entire synagogue that seemed like an expensive fix. One day I noticed all the chairs in the synagogue had little 'socks' on their legs. Suddenly as everyone got up to pray there was no more scraping or screeching. Quiet had returned to the synagogue. No one took credit. A little idea which changed the atmosphere of an entire synagogue.

I was in line at the drug store to get some skin cream for a rash. In front of me, a guy discussed with the clerk what medications to buy. She told him how much everything would cost. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cash and counted it out. He was still a couple dollars short. He didn't have his wallet with him and didn't have a credit card. He looked up at the clerk hoping she would cut him a break. I put down the missing amount on the counter. He looked back at me. "Hey that's like one of those stories they share on Facebook where a stranger steps in to help ," he said, "hey I got my wallet back in my car, I can get this back to you." I'd read those stories too. They really inspired me. Those are true hero opportunities that are within reach of all of us. I looked over at him and I said, "That's OK, just pay it forward." Yeah. Keep it moving. Pay it forward.