Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

We Could Be Heroes

By Kirk Hiner

What I like sometimes is a stuffed mushroom.

I don't even really care what it's stuffed with (although I do prefer crab meat), just so long as it's hot and on my plate when I'm ready to eat. I bring this up because last month, at my younger brother's wedding, I was ready to eat a stuffed mushroom, but it wasn't served. I was a groomsman, you see, and for some ungodly reason the wedding party wasn't served until well after all the guests. In fact, by the time we were handed our main course, the bride and groom had already cut the cake.

I attribute this atrocity to the fact that the reception was at a country club, and country clubs never get anything right. I can't stand them. In fact, I can hardly wait until I have enough money to not join a country club.

This article has nothing to do with country clubs; I just wanted to get that off my chest. My point is loosely related to my brother's wedding, though, so I'll get back to that.

The Friday before the ceremony, my family stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. It was pretty much like every other motel I've ever seen, except for two main additions: the wasp in my room and the Macintosh behind the front desk.

The wasp wasn't really so much of a feature, I should point out. The last thing one expects when staying in a motel is to be stung on the foot...or anywhere for that matter. But I was. Had I not been laughing so hard at the absurdity of it, I might have been upset.

But even more shocking than that was the Macintosh. When I went to get my key, I saw the old Quadra back there and commented, "Cool, you have a Mac."

"Yeah, and I hate it," the woman behind the counter spat back.

She may as well have stung me on the foot. "What? Why?" I cried.

"Because it keeps crashing. We can't get it to start up!"

Enter Hiner. "Would you like me to come back and take a look at it?" I asked in my best "I will pay the rent!" voice. They agreed and back I went. After having them assure me that the Mac wasn't hooked up to a network and I couldn't accidentally alter the reservations of every Holiday Inn across America, I went to work.

Now bear in mind that I have absolutely no formal training on Macintosh system support. I've never even read any books. All I know about the Mac I learned from either use or from friends. Yet I still felt confident enough to assist these disgruntled Mac users in their darkest hour. I started up the computer and, sure enough, the system crashed when trying to load the Finder.

So now it was my turn to be a hero. To these helpless hotel employees, I was Batman. Now if I could just...reach my...Norton...Utility Belt...

Needless to say, by the end of the evening, I'd not only solved their Finder troubles (shhh...all I had to do was throw out the Finder preferences file, but don't tell them that), but I also got their printer working for them again and fixed a couple of major errors with Norton Utilities. And the next day, I left with not only the satisfaction of a job well done, but a $30 discount on the room as well.

You see, it's all about heroism. Why did I help out these people when I could've been sitting in the jacuzzi or watching The Powerpuff Girls? Because they had a Mac, and they were in need. I expected no reward; I just wanted to insure that these Mac users were satisfied with their product. Granted, I do have selfish reasons for that, but everyone still benefits.

Besides, hasn't everyone wanted to be a hero at one point? Our society has always been fixated with heroes. What else could explain those last two Batman movies? (That franchise has closed down, right?) That's why we cry foul when people claim that Abe Lincoln may have been gay. We love our heroes. We want to be them.

But pity guys like me who stand absolutely no chance of ever becoming a superhero. I'm a web designer by day and a writer by night. It's not as if I'm likely to cause the sort of freak mishap that would bestow super powers upon me. I can't accidentally spill the wrong chemicals and blow up my lab, thereby acquiring super strength. I can't get bitten by radioactive spiders to get their keen spider sense. I don't have millions of dollars to buy my way into heroism. And no matter how much people will try to convince me of it, I'm not from another planet. No, I just read, and I just write, and sometimes I eat a stuffed mushroom.

Yet still I dream of somehow becoming a superhero. Perhaps I'll be speed reading one day and--my attention diverted--I'll hit a comma and get thrown across the room into my lava lamp. The alien substances will pour over me so that, whenever I become flustered, I become Captain Redundancy! Yes, Captain Redundancy, making the world safe for safety once again! Who, with his trusty sidekick tYpograph9calE rin at his side, battles the ever present threat from the evil Contra Dict and his Maniacal Misplaced Modifier Machine!

You see? It's hopeless.

But if there were a superhero who would continue to give me hope, it'd be Letterman. You all remember Letterman, right? "Stronger than a rolling O, more powerful than silent E, able to leap capital T in a single bound." He was the guy on the Electric Company who would always foil the Evil Professor by removing the T from his varsity sweater to turn "rain" back into "train." Now that was my kind of hero. But me? I have no varsity sweater. I did get a letter in high school...for being in marching band for four years...but I have no idea where the thing is now. Plus, it's only an A, and there's not a whole lot a guy can do with an A. Turn "perl" back into "pearl," perhaps? It would certainly make me richer at work.

So thank Heavens for the Macintosh. I may not be stopping train collisions or throwing armed nuclear warheads into outer space, but I do sometimes help people get a little bit more work done and enjoy their computers a little bit more. And who knows? Maybe one day my mother will make me a cape...

Or at least some stuffed mushrooms.

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Friday, 22-Aug-2008 00:06:59 EDT