Unlikely Heroes

A 90s punk story, ecological insights, meditation, & creative prompt

Dear Fellow Human,

How are you in this moment, my friend? And how do you feel when you wake up these days? Curious and inspired? Or weighted with dread, concern, overwhelm, and anxiety? Or maybe, like me, you move through your days under the strange influence of a queasy cocktail of all of these feelings at once.

We are living in strange change-times. So many of us have access to so much luxury that our ancestors could never have dreamed of—hot tap water, heated and cooled homes, aisles overflowing with food in multiple grocery stores throughout town, and myriad ways to relieve pain, ease childbirth, and resolve lethal illnesses. And yet, so much is threatened right now too—potable water, the oceans and all the life they support, rainforests and their essential role in keeping greenhouse gases in check, countless species, and whole populations of innocent people, just to name a few points of precarity.

In an effort to keep my hope up and my mind open to possibility, I am meeting the precarious and painful dangers of this era with this inquiry:

Perhaps strange times require strange medicines.

I’ve noticed in nature and in my own life that sometimes the tools and champions that are most effective in seemingly bleak situations are small, humble, and even bizarre. So let me tell you, fellow human, about how tiger salamanders, chickens, and a young punk armed with discarded pizza have saved the day. Perhaps these stories might help you notice other unlikely heroes that we might uplift in this singular time when so much is at stake.

Strange Hero #1: Tiger salamanders halt local ecological destruction:

Tiger salamanders are a protected, endangered, and inherently unarmed species. But because they populate an area in California’s Sonoma county that a corporation was vying to quarry—and in the process release pollutants that would decimate the local ecosystem—the ecologically irresponsible quarry has been stalled (the fight to protect this land continues. Read more about and listen to music about this ongoing issue here).

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Strange Hero #2: Shall we rethink the term, “playing chicken?”

Deer are gentle, graceful, and lovable creatures—unless you happen to be a gardener. But should you put a chicken coop in your garden, you’ll find that deer will stay away from your tender greens, sweet berries, and rambling squash vines. And if those deer come close, your chicken friends will flap and strut and cluck and fuss until the deer retreat.

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Strange Hero #3: My secret weapon? Cold pizza:

Picture Philadelphia in the 1990s. A seminal band of the time, Neurosis, was playing in town, and I was going to hang out with some friends outside the show. But first, I biked to the dumpster behind a pizza place, pulled out some freshly deposited vegetarian pies (still warm in their boxes), and biked to the show to meet up with J and C.

J was a striking young female punk with eyes you could melt into and a few facial piercings—septum, eyebrow, and lip. It was a little more metal on the face than the average person, but not that odd. J’s partner, C, was another matter. To distinguish him from all the other C’s, we all referred to him as “C-shit-in-the-face” because he had more facial piercings than anyone—everything J had, but doubled, plus gaping holes in the centers of his cheeks, lined with spacers that people usually use for their earlobes. He had spacers in his earlobes too, weighed down further by stainless steel hoops.

I arrived with my bike basket overflowing with pizza, and we proceded to have a harmless late-night, outside-the-Neurosis show hangout. No drugs. No booze. Just free pizza and goofing around to the muffled soundtrack of Neurosis mushing its way past the walls of the club and into the sticky summer night air.

This was downtown Philly on a weekend night. People streamed by us unbothered as they traipsed between bars, clubs, and trolleys until three drunk male U of Penn students that leaned towards the “jock” side of the spectrum staggered toward us. One of them stared, mouth agape at J, stopped in front of us, and sneered, “What is all that in your face?” Fellow human, let me remind you that J, with three pieces of jewelry in her face, was standing next to “C-shit-in-the-face.”

Immediately, I felt protective of my friend, who had just received an unsolicited, ugly, judgmental, and agressive expression of a drunk man’s desire. So I did what anyone would do in my position: I picked up a nice greasy piece of cold pie from my bike basket, and slapped him in the face with it.

Fellow human, I wish you could have been there to see the look on that poor fellow’s face in that moment. Stunned out of his desire and disdain for J, he turned to me and paused as I held his gaze. His fists were clenched. Some part of him wanted to strike back, but his conscience had no script for this moment. Is it okay to hit someone smaller and weaker than you because they slapped you with a slice of cold pizza?

His friends solved the riddle for him. Laughing but insistent, they pulled him away from us and onward down the street, coaxing him, “Come on man, come on. It was just pizza. Don’t punch a girl. Let it go.”

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Fellow human, we are each small individuals facing a time of momentous and painful change. I share these musings and stories with you in the hopes that they inspire you to keep shining your own light into the darkness, to keep looking for creative solutions, and to keep loving and helping others when you can.

Even if we have never met, fellow human, I hold you in my heart as a practice. And in any dark hours that you might encounter, please know that I would slap any offensive buffoon in the face with cold pizza for you—in a heartbeat, my friend—in a single, unruly, and endlessly loving heartbeat.