Skip to main content

The 'O' in Hero

Here I am, lying on the floor of Port Authority Station at New York City waiting for the bus to Massachusetts. I have been in the United States for over six hours and already it was starting to feel like home. Next to me, on the same concrete floor with their heads resting on their bags, are some strangers that I just met who happened to be going to the same college. New friends! New family! We have been chit-chatting about opportunities ahead of us, about the new lives we have just begun.

I need a soda from all that talking and laughter. I feel the change in my pocket; enough for a can of coke. I get up and a ring falls out of my bag. It is a plastic toy ring based on the rings from the animated television show called Captain Planet. The rings were used by the Planeteers to summon the superhero Captain Planet. “What’s that?” asks my new friend. Slightly embarrassed by the thought of an eighteen-year-old still carrying around a toy jewelry, I begin to tell the story of my hero.

I was seven years old when I decided that I wanted to be a Planeteer. The first step to become one, I thought, was to get a Planeteer ring. It cost five dollars to get one. Just like Kwame, the smart one among the Planeteers, I always had some ideas up my sleeve. My idea was to put Ovaltine in a small plastic bag, freeze it, and then sell it to my classmates at school as frozen treats for ten cents a bag. As I made the frozen treats with my older brother, I could not stop talking about how excited I was to become a Planeteer and being that much closer to Captain Planet. “You’re not just going to be a Planeteer,” said my brother, “you’re going to be Captain Planet himself one day”.
I went to school the next day with a big smile on my face and a cooler bag full of ‘O’ (that was what I called the frozen treats). The recess bell rang. With a feeling of optimism, I walked onto the playground with all the ‘O’ I could possibly carry. I approached everyone I saw on the playground. “Get your ‘O’!” I yelled. The mental image I had of large crowd of kids swarming me did not come true. I returned home disappointed. The optimism I had that morning melted like the ‘O’ in my cooler bag. My brother encouraged me to give it another try, but this time he said to add his special ingredient to the ‘O’. “I know it looks like sugar,” said my brother, “but it is actually magic powder.”

I went to school the next day with a cooler bag full of ‘O’ mixed with magic powder. Magic powder? How can magic powder make people buy ‘O’? I felt like an idiot. I felt like an even bigger idiot for carrying around a bag full of frozen substances during recess. But that feeling did not last long. In no time there were kids swarming me and demanding ‘O’! The ‘O’ with the magic powder was a hit! “Get your ‘Magic O’!” I yelled in excitement.

With the massive profit I made, not only did I buy the Planeteer ring, I also purchased a Captain Planet action-figure. I had both the ring and the hero! I could not put Captain Planet down. Captain Planet would follow me around all day to protect me, his new Planeteer! Even on the dining table, he would be there flying around. “Put that toy down!” my mom would tell me as my dad talked about whatever he was talking about. I obediently placed Captain Planet next to my plate as my dad continued saying how proud he was of his younger brother. “My brother is so busy at Harvard he doesn’t even have the time to call,” said my dad sarcastically, “I bet he is having so much fun there”. Captain Planet does not need to go to Harvard to kick ass, I thought to myself. I glanced at the TV out of boredom and saw a commercial for a new Captain Planet toy. I had to get it!

I thought I would make some more ‘O’ to get more money for the new Captain Planet toy. I made sure I put in the magic powder. However, no one bought it. Recess was almost over and I did not make a single sale. As I began to walk out of the playground, I saw my brother in the corner giving money to several kids and then quickly leaving. My brother did not see me though. The kids then proceeded to buy a bunch of ‘O’ from me. Was that how I made those sales? Was the magic powder just sugar? I stopped making ‘O’ because I did not want to take anymore of my brother’s money. But I still got the new Captain Planet toy with the money I made.

“What a hero!” says the new friend I made at Port Authority Station. I chuckle and begin to walk towards the vending machine for that can of soda. I look at the wristwatch my brother gave me. My bus will not be here for another hour. I check my wallet to make sure I still have the hundred-dollar bill my brother gave me before I left for the United States. I have more than enough money to buy a can of soda. I continue to walk, passing the vending machine completely and stopping at the pay phone. I take out the change in my pocket and begin calling home.

Although the emotion expressed in this story may be real, events and characters depicted here are purely a work of fiction.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ontology of Virtual Reality

In 2012 the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality (VR) headset display, made headlines in the technology world when it raised US$2.5 million through crowdfunding. In 2014 it was acquired by Facebook for a whopping US$2 billion. Ever since then leaders in technology have been pouring money in VR research & development and there is no shortage of creative studios producing VR content. Although VR have not reached universal adoption, the data looks to be auspicious. In 2010, just 2 years prior to VR's supposed harbinger, I wrote a chapter in my Sufficiency in the Philosophy of Technology under Prof. John Sanbonmatsu titled 'The Ontology of Virtual Reality'. Rereading it, I think it is still relevant today. Here it is: There are two aspects of virtual reality that pertains to human use: information and communication (Valentine and Holloway n.d.). Virtual reality is a space filled with information provided by its architects. Perhaps the easiest example to grasp is the internet...
4 comments
Read more

Don Taylor's Creon in 'Antigone'

Who is the protagonist in Sophocles’ Antigone ? Is it Antigone or Creon? Scholars in literature often debate that question. But in Don Taylor’s 1984 rendition of Antigone , there is no doubt that Creon (played by John Shrapnel) is the protagonist. Don Taylor’s direction to have a Creon-focused Antigone was a precarious decision, but a highly successful one. You have to see it to believe it. The story of Antigone (played by Juliet Stevenson) is about the recalcitrant title character who buried her dead brother thereby violating a decree set forth by her uncle, the new king Creon. She did it to uphold a religious right she believed to be ubiquitous, but Creon viewed it as an act against his power and therefore refused to grant her impunity from death. Even the fact that she was his niece and future daughter-in-law could not have saved her nor did she want to be saved, at least not through family ties. After all, Antigone's iconoclastic action, her brother’s burial, was also ...
Post a Comment
Read more

M6 Software-Defined Radio

Here describes a design of a digital radio receiver for a multi-user transmitter with an error prone oscillator that functions in non-ideal transmission channels. The implementation is software-defined (i.e. no hardware other than an analog-to-digital converter) with Matlab simulations yielding deciphered messages that are fully comprehensible. It was designed by me and advised by Prof. Andrew Klein of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. What to expect of the signal clarity by the end of this article. Introduction The M6 radio receiver was designed to work in tandem with a transmitter with the specifications listed in the table below:  symbol source alphabet +1, +3   assigned intermediate frequency  210 MHz  nominal symbol period 121.6 nanoseconds  SRRC pulse shape rolloff f  β ∈ [0.1,0.3]  FDM user slot allotment 10.7 MHz   truncated width of SRRC pulse shape 8 transmitter clock periods  preamble sequen...
3 comments
Read more