Okay, let us pretend that I'm six years old again. Shall we? Right, so, this would be the age when I actually had a penchant for assigning my shortcomings a "hero" to honorably represent everything that I wished I could be. So, if I'm about six then it's an easy, honest answer: Superman. I used to wear my Superman cape and my favorite blue jeans anywhere and everywhere I'd go. My mum literally sewed velcro fasteners to some of my shirts in order for me to wear the damn cape all the time. Imagine her shame.
Okay, moving on.
Let us fast-forward a bit, past the milieu of adolescent idiosyncrasy like voice-changing, spontaneous hard-ons, and perpetual acne. We arrive in a little place called 1994. What's so significant about 1994 your wildly imaginative brain, undoubtedly dumbfounded by this irrelevant source of time wasting that you're reading, may ask? Well, let me tell you. That was the year of the World Cup and when I would essentially be changed forever.
Between my days commuting, annoyingly I may add, back and forth from Juarez to El Paso for school, and playing non-stop footy (futbol), I really could not say I had a team that I followed very much. Then one magnificent summer evening I sat down and watched Netherlands vs. Brazil (Netherlands being my father's favorite team because they played what is called Total Football; a combination of style, defensive attacking, attacking defending, and all-around teamwork; christened this around the time Johan Cryuff was playing, the player famous for the aptly named 'Cryuff Turn' where the player faces his target, usually a teammate, and instead of kicking the ball to his target he drags it behind his planted foot...all in all, the reason why I loved football from an early age and played it religiously, especially so I could dazzle opponents with my 'Cryuff Turn' jejeje).
In this match Brazil managed to score twice in the first hour or so. My father and me, devastated through and through, had all but thrown the telly out of the window. Not to mention that we cursed like sailors (the first time I said 'puta madre' in front of my dad, but it's okay because he was pirouetting the ears of his only son with even more lavishly crude obscenities). We hated Romario and Bebeto intensely, but then a guy I had followed closely the whole cup, and had managed to have a brilliant showing thus far, scored for the Netherlands. His name is Dennis Bergkamp. And though the Netherlands managed to tie the game, it was Brazil who would advance with a score of 3-2, the bastards that they are.
Of course, Bergkamp became my newfound hero. He played at Inter at the time, but the following year he changed clubs. Trust me, although I was not as adept at online surfing as I am now, I knew everything that was happening in the football world.
In 1995, Bergkamp moved to a London-based club called Arsenal. If you know me, then you know the rest of this story. If you don't, then I'll do you a service and not bore you with the details. But what you should know, and what is relevant to this section of 'Heroes', is that I grew out of having heroes, and I began to feel what passion is all about. So, right now, I cannot honestly say that a hero is out there the way Superman was out there when I was six. But there is Arsenal FC, and that in itself is just the right amount of pain and anguish, but with surging orgasms of joy, that a man needs. I imagine it's the equivalent to, when I was boy, if I had suddenly lifted off the ground and flown the way Superman does. In essence, that's how I feel when Arsenal scores, or if even more so when they win. It's like flying.
Thanks for reading.