Interference heroes: A group of people who feel the need to toss me their opinions about how they feel I should live my life.
These people exist. I’m not just referring to my mother who refused to adhere to my teenage self-expression desire for a blue mohawk. She never understood how essential it was for me to coordinate my wardrobe with Trash, my drummer boyfriend, when I was 15 years old. Shaving half my head would have been the ultimate symbol of love. Plus, the tambourine requires blue hair to master the correct rhythm. She and I are still slightly at odds about the subject.
Recently, while sitting at a coffee shop wearing headphones and surrounded by books, I wore a San Diego State sweater that I was planning to later return to the bookstore. For the record, I bought that expensive sweater for my short niece. However, because I do have hope for my short niece’s growth, I decided a bigger size seemed like a more financially appropriate investment.
OK, I wore the sweater. I was cold. I had no other choice. I looked like an 11-year-old girl—specifically, one that was wearing all her tags on her bright pink sweater, but comfort is something I will never deny myself.
At that moment, two interference heroes fell from the sky, as if my silly look set off a Bat-Signal light far into the night sky telling them to interject into my life.
In front of my clearly busy table they anxiously waved at me until I unmanned the headphones from my ears. The two heroines informed me that they were just conversing about how they would no longer stand at the wayside when they see others’ “wrongdoings.” I was their first victim of salvation. To my surprise, “saggy pants wearers” was what they included on their list of evil.
I must admit, I did feel more hard-core knowing saggy pants and my refusal to detach the tags from clothes was considered evil wrongdoing. Today, I wear my saggy pants with pride and a malicious grin.
This is not the only run-in I’ve had recently with the likes of interference heroes. On an entirely separate occasion at Fiesta Island Dog Park, I walked a dog that spent a solid two hours in the ocean, ingesting at least 37 gallons of salt water.
Before the heroes reading this column interject, again, for the record, I picked up the first round of dog poop. The second round after all the ingested salt water wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t even able to be bagged. It resembled something close to melted soft-serve ice cream on a blistering summer afternoon at the fair grounds.
The dog crouched over, releasing that mound of awfulness on the sands of Fiesta Island. My initial reaction was to run far from that awful scene the dog had just created. It was at the moment I chose to run like Forrest Gump, when two more heroes sprinted after me, as if I neglected to place my own personal human feces into a bag at the dog park.
This time it was a married duo, wearing the appropriate cape and spandex. These two honeymoon heroes were aggressive in their tone, and for some odd reason they remained upset at me even after I thoroughly explained how the dog had no thumbs to remove its vulgar pile left in the sand. To relieve everyone’s anxiety, as well as the poor dog’s embarrassment, I kicked sand over what was left behind.
I am trying to be a good citizen. When my clothes no longer meet my unique standards of good looks, I promptly donate them to the less fortunate who are in need of style, too.
Every week I separate my trash, so the homeless of San Diego don’t have to dig too hard to find my plastic bottles.
No one jumps out the woodwork to applaud me on those good deeds. All I’m asking is, how could I offend so many heroes?
