Average Heroes #2: The Hygiene Genius

He fights germs.
He fights dandruff.
He fights those gross eye boogers he gets in the morning.

And he fights dirty.

Brusha, brusha, brusha!

Average Hero #2 – The Hygiene Genius

WASH! He washes his hands before dinner.
SCRUB! He takes a bubble bath after playing outside all day.
BRUSH! He brushes his teeth before bedtime.
FLOSS! Well, sometimes. When he remembers.

Has The Hygiene Genius ever saved the day for you?

If you’ve never met him, here’s how: Next time you’re brushing your teeth, look reeeeaaally close in the mirror.

(← Average Hero #1 – The Pigeon Whisperer)


Average Heroes #1: The Pigeon Whisperer

Believe it or not, there are super-average people out there who do super-average things. These people are not ordinary. They are extra ordinary! (No, no, they’re not extraordinary. They are ordinary, plus even more ordinary.)

Some of them enjoy coffee with cream and sugar. Some fart and blame it on the dog. Some drive their cars 4 miles above the speed limit. These people look just like you and I, but when they do the same things we do, they do it a little differently. They do everything super-averagely!

They are:

Average Heroes

Average Hero #1 – The Pigeon Whisperer

One cold but sunny winter morning, I’m wandering around a Chicago neighborhood in search of an art supply store. In my path, I approach piles and piles of pecking and pushy pigeons. They. Are. Everywhere! I look around this feathered carpet and see a figure in the distance.

It’s a bird!

It’s a plane!

It’s Alfred Hitchcock!

Here, birdy birdy!

Nope.

It’s just a very nice gentleman throwing around breadcrumbs.

“Sorry about that,” he mutters, busy with his pigeons.

“Don’t be sorry, you’re their hero,” I say and slowly tiptoe through the pigeon mosh pit, hoping none of the birds poop on me.

Pigeons WORSHIP him. Men want to BE him. He is not afraid of anything! Not stinky pigeon poop. Not silly mites or diseases they may carry. Not even those dumb $500 fines for feeding, what the city unfortunately refers to them as, “pests”.

This man is single-handedly reviving a civilization of our oft misunderstood, fellow city-dwellers who are just trying to survive.


Wisdom: Viagra Makes A Great Point

On an escalator. On my way to catch a Redline train. Out of nowhere, there’s a voice behind me:

“I heard they’re going to start putting Viagra into Chapstick. They want people to keep a stiff upper lip.”

Stiff Upper Lip

I laugh. I turn around. I find a tiny, elder lady, wearing a long jean-overalls dress and a baseball cap, grinning at me.

She made such a great, random wisecrack, she deserves an “Awesome of the Year” award.

Naturally, this caused me to do some reading to learn how Viagra works. And it just so happens that taking a Viagra pill is just like retaining knowledge: It’s useless without stimulation. All your life experiences are the stimulation to the knowledge you retain. Your experiences create wisdom. (Hopefully!)

A hard-on doesn’t count as personal growth. But if you are very wise, you just might have a stiff upper lip of steel.