Go Ninja Go

I was 4 years old when I got grounded for the first time. I used to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my Dad, and he would always be the Shredder. I would take turns with myself being one of the four different turtles; Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. My Dad would come home from work and the games would begin. He’d get on his knees and scream in mock pain when I would kick him screaming “Cowabunga!” The problem was that one day, I didn’t stop playing. Somehow my Dad had actually become the dread Shredder in my head. Instead of seeing his happy smirk placed just under his blonde mustache with whiskers on his cheeks, my 4 year old mind registered only the metal plating with spikes situated just under the blades of a samurai helmet.
To say the least my Dad was hurt by this. The next time we went to my Grandma Fuzzy’s house in Mississippi, we brought all of my Ninja Turtle stuff, and ‘forgot’ it there. I didn’t see anything Ninja Turtle for months.
I say all of this to prove a point. I was obsessed with Ninja Turtles.
Eventually, when I had served my time without my Mean Green Fighting Machines, I would carry around a, you guessed it, Ninja Turtle Lunchbox filled with my toys. It was a well worn box. It was red with the turtles all over it on the front, jumping over the Shredder, who I now knew was not my Dad. I had so many toys in there that it would barely close, and since I had so many, I wasn’t really too bothered about sharing them with other kids my age. Both of my parents played on a co-ed softball team, and I would sit in front of the bleachers by the dugout and play in the red dirt with my turtles. Leonardo was my favorite. I didn’t let anyone else play with that one. He had seen many battles with the powerful Shredder. Whenever Shredder hit him he would fly through the air and smash into any obstacle in his way. I would display this by taking Leonardo and throwing him against the chain-length fence of the softball field and then I’d pick him up dramatically while making him utter words of vengeance on the Shredder.
One night while watching my parents play softball, a little pudgy boy came up and asked to play with me. I kindly obliged, but clung tight to Leo. He played very much like I did; first Raphael went flying into the bleachers, then Michelangelo made it into the trashcan, and finally Donatello hit the cinder blocks of the dugout and he lost his arm. He looked at me next.
The world seemed to slow down around me. The crowd in the bleachers drained away into the background, the smell of sunflower seeds and red dirt mingled near my nostrils, and my eyes narrowed onto his hand in front of me. I was no longer a 6 year old boy, I was Leonardo, and the pudgy boy was not a boy anymore, he had become the Shredder. His outstretched hand looked more like claws.
“Give him to me.” Said the Shredder.
“Never! I’ll protect him to the death Shredder!” I replied. I then stood up and put the toy in my pocket to free up both hands so that I could deal lethal ninja blows, when suddenly the world was stopped once more. The Shredder was much quicker than I had thought, and this game was no longer fun.
I dropped to my knees and began to cry and the little boy grabbed my Leonardo toy and started playing with it. He had an evil grin plastered to his face as if he really were the Shredder, and then suddenly a look of surprise wiped that away. My Mom had been on deck just on the other side of the fence when the pudgy boy punched me in the forehead and she’d witnessed the whole thing. She now stood behind fat boy and she was holding him by the shirt-neck in one hand, and holding her bat in the other.
“Who’s kid is this!?” My Mom growled. She’s quite scary when she’s angry. No one from the bleachers answered. “I said, ‘WHO’S KID IS THIS?!’” Still no answer. “Whoever is responsible for this kid, better get over here now and take care of the situation. I’m up to bat.” She then dragged the little boy and sat him down on the bleachers, tears now running down his face.
That night I grew up a little bit. I discovered that though Ninja Turtles are quite powerful and they love pizza, that they aren’t anything compared to my Mom. Shortly after my Mom went back to the field to bat, a man who had been standing just beside the bleachers got up and grabbed the pudgy boy and shuffled away in a hurry.
I’m 22 years old now and I must admit that I still have a love for all things Ninja Turtle, and while working at a camp this past summer I dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, but ever since that day at the ball-fields my appreciation and respect has grown for my Mom. She is the long lost Ninja Turtle. She is my Mom.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly...and Something Else.

The history of our world has brought forth many people that have done the unthinkable. Things that mankind once thought to be impossible are now possible and things that usually mean certain death have been overcome. Men and women that stand in the face of danger and laugh. People whose paths lead to nowhere but to the extreme: The few, the proud, the hardcore.
In my search to understand these individuals a little better I went to Tombstone. After all Tombstone is considered to be, “the town too tough to die.” It doesn’t get a whole lot more hardcore than that.
I wrote down a few things I learned in the ways of the hardcore while there:
1.) Wyatt Earp is hardcore.
2.) Slapping people and then saying, “Are you gonna do somethin’, or just stand there and bleed?” is hardcore.
3.) Doc Holliday is also hardcore. (Give him a ship and stick him in the Caribbean and you’ve got Captain Jack Sparrow)
4.) Twirling a cup is more hardcore than twirling a gun…..if you’re Doc Holliday.
5.) Playing classical piano is hardcore…..if you’re Doc Holliday.
6.) Mustaches are hardcore.
7.) Spurs are hardcore.
8.) Walking in slow-motion is hardcore.
9.) I’m your Huckleberry….
10.) Hiding behind your horse, while riding, while in a gun fight, and then shooting from around its neck is hardcore.

So in review: Wyatt Earp took on an entire gang of hoodlums known as the “Cowboys,” with his two brothers and his friend Doc Holliday. Wyatt took people’s guns and hit them over the head with them more often than he shot people with them. Doc Holliday is one of the fastest gunslingers of the Old West…many bar-fights were won at the tip of his gun, and one time he even saved Wyatt Earp’s life…which is hardcore since Wyatt has already been established as being hardcore himself.
I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly it is that makes these people hardcore. Why do Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday fall into the category? I mean…I could slap someone and ask them what they were going to do about it…and most people would think I’m a jerk then slap me back. I have to admit my first reaction to that would be to cry. If I grew a mustache I would just look kind of weird and if I wore spurs I’d probably hurt myself and get laughed at. I can’t ride a horse that well and if I could I doubt that I’d be able to hide behind it in a gun-fight. Who knows though right? I do say “I’m your Huckleberry,” on occasion, but most people just look at me funny and laugh: Not the initial reaction I’d be looking for when trying to be hardcore.
So what is it? Is it something in the DNA? Some scientists are trying to prove that people who believe in a god of some sort only believe because of what they call the ‘god’ gene. I don’t believe that myself, but it makes you wonder right? My eye-color is dictated by the blueprints of my DNA. My height and build spur out of that too…I got gypped. Is being hardcore ingrained in the DNA?
In the movie Tombstone Wyatt Earp is infuriated when his brother Morgan gets shot in the back and killed. Wyatt and a few others go on a manhunt and track down some of the men responsible. They eventually catch up to them and a gunfight of epic proportions ensues from horseback leaving only one of the Cowboy gang alive. In his fury Wyatt calls out to the fleeing survivor, sweat on his brow and mustache twitching, “You tell them I’m coming! You tell them I’m coming and Hell is coming with me!” And that’s just what he did. Wyatt held to his word and sought out each and every Cowboy, putting an end to their shenanigans. That is hardcore.
Doc Holliday had Tuberculosis. It’s a nasty little disease that attacks the lungs and essentially makes it hard to breathe…there’s a lot more to it, but for the most part it makes life more difficult…it’s a major hindrance if you’re prone to getting in gunfights. Things with the Cowboys flared up particularly bright right in the middle of one of Holliday’s worse moments, and like the hardcore dude he is, Doc decided that he would challenge a man to a duel. If I had tuberculosis I’d use that as an excuse not to get in a gunfight. Hard. Core.
However, despite my recent understandings of the ways of the hardcore, I have heard and seen other voices in the matter.
There is an ancient way. Its actually proclaimed all over the world and spoken about by many men. Some claim that it is exactly the opposite of hardcore, but I would beg to differ. So, rather than elaborate on my already vague statements, I’ll let my list speak for itself.

Hardcore things I’ve learned from other places:
1.) Loving your enemy is hardcore.
2.) Turning the other cheek is hardcore.
3.) Lying down your pride is hardcore.
4.) Laying down one’s life for a friend is hardcore.
5.) Spitting in the dirt and healing a man with the mud is hardcore.
6.) Walking on water is hardcore.
7.) Causing earthquakes upon your death is hardcore.
8.) Dying on a cross for all of mankind is hardcore.
9.) Rising from the dead is hardcore.
10.) Before Abraham was, I am.

The truth of the matter is, there are two or more versions of what it means to be hardcore. The first of which is the first list I made. But I would argue that it is in fact easy to strike out in violence. It is mostly easy to grasp onto our pride and let it float on the rising waves of this life. Getting angry is definitely easy, and violence is the most logical outlet for our anger--who cares who gets in our way?
Hardcore is doing what is hard. When we come against an enemy it is much easier to hate them in return and much more difficult to love them. Hitting someone back is easy. Taking the slap to the face, looking that person in the eye after and telling them you love them, then turning the other cheek to them, is hardcore. It is easy to get people’s attention to feed our pride. It is much more hardcore to do something great and pass the glory off to God. Saving your own skin is easy enough, but to put your neck out in place of a friend’s goes against the grain.
Don't get me wrong. The guys of Tombstone had something right. They held to their word with solid certainty. When they said something they meant it. When they put their minds to something they kept to it, no matter the hindrance or cost. When Jesus said, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On he third day he will be raised to life!" (Matthew 20:18-19) he meant it. Sticking to your guns is hardcore.

My challenge is this: rethink what hardcore means. To quote Bradley Hathaway, “Society tells me all day long that I have defined manhood completely wrong. But you ask any honest man and he will agree. You ask any honest woman and she too will see…that I, am a manly man.” Our world has a different view on the hardcore, and it usually falls in line with the views of evolution, "Survival of the fittest,". "Kill or be killed." That to me is simply surviving. Being hardcore is meant for those who choose to live, not just survive. Hardcore is for the few who choose the hard path; The narrow path.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wonds you have been healed.” ~1 Peter 2:24. That is hardcore.

Red and Green

I have a hero. He’s not quite what you would imagine when one mentions a hero. In fact most people would think he’s pretty ordinary. He can’t leap over tall buildings. He definitely doesn’t have laser-vision, thank God. He doesn’t have a metal skeleton like Wolverine.

I met my hero when I was about 4 years old. I’m pretty positive that he doesn’t remember our first encounter though. I was pretty young at the time so my memory is a bit fuzzy around the edges too.

I remember when we went to Albuquerque for his surgery. He had Cerebral Palsy, a very mild form of Cerebral Palsy, and it had caused his legs to be pigeon-toed. He wasn’t able to walk very well, much less run. The doctors told us that they were going to cut his calves open and make a zig-zag incision in his tendons to stretch them out and hopefully help him to walk straight. When I heard they were going to cut him open I wanted to faint. I felt sick and nauseous and my palms were sweaty. I also knew it was going to be a big surgery because my Nana and Papa were coming. They lived in Arizona and that was at least 8 hours away.

When he went into the operation room I seem to remember him looking at me without fear in his eyes and (I hope I’m not making this up), he gave me a thumbs up with a smile. I think I was scared enough for the both of us. The hospital room seemed to be shouting scary things at me from every inch of its shiny white corridors. I could hear people screaming around the corner and one lady was crying a few seats over.

The surgery was successful. My hero came out later that day wearing his new casts that went from toe to knee, and due to the Christmas season at hand, one was green and the other was red. I jumped up and gave him a group hug with the giant stuffed mouse my grandparents had given him.

Christmas came and both my hero and I got new bikes. I remember, later that Christmas morning, going outside into the brisk weather and watching in wonder, my little brother get on that bike and ride it, without training wheels, while wearing his giant cumbersome casts. Even at my young age of 10 I knew how amazing it was. I’ll never forget his determined look as he took off in those casts and the laughter that emitted from all of us as my Dad let go of the seat and my hero, my little brother, took off on his own down the street, his legs a blur of green and red.

I have a hero. He can’t jump over buildings, but he can jump over anything that gets in his way. He doesn’t have laser-vision, but he will set his gaze and it won’t break. He doesn’t have a metal skeleton, but he does have a heart of gold.
I have a hero. He is my little brother.