Hero.

There once was a boy. That’s a good beginning, isn’t it? He had brownish-reddish-blackish-blondish hair. He was a little on the shortish side of tall with a mother and father.

He was a dreamer. He ached and cried in secret, once because a girl from two houses down poked him in the arm, calling him weak. He put ink in her tea, giggling ecstatically as she wailed, fruitlessly trying to hide her blackened teeth behind her hands. He heard of war in far away lands, but was more concerned with who actually spit the farthest out of the group.

He pulled the legs off of bugs and scabbed his knees. He spent an entire summer trying to figure out how a compass worked until the other kids called him nerdy and so he hid it away. He didn’t understand why people died or God was cruel. He wanted to hug his mother and cling to her hand, but feared his brother would think he was a sissy. He was confused on whether “Quaker” was a religion or a breakfast food.

The boy grew up to fidget uncomfortably in starched clothing at church. He learned to attract girls by tousling his hair and smoking cigarettes. Girls sometimes still made him cry. Higher and post-higher school were, occasionally, studied at. He lost his mother and father in different ways.

It was then that he became a hero. Some called him protagonist, champion, superman. He chopped down a cherry tree, truthfully, and was a rebel without cause. He turned into a cockroach once during a stranger time in his life. He annoyed his friends the time he spoke in all iambic pentameter, though his wife was giddy from his romantic balcony visit. His back ached for weeks after painting the chapel ceiling, though the high from the fumes was nice. To him socks didn’t have to match, but “e” always equaled “mc” squared. A tear slipped from his eye for the first time since school as he pressed the button dropping the biggest bomb Japan didn’t anticipate. He felt the bullet smash into him, ending his presidency.

There once was a boy. It always begins with a boy.