A Race of Heroes

Talin Hansen
Mr. Watson 4th Period
1/19/2011
Hero Paper final copy
A Race of Heroes
Rather than have only one hero, I have many. In fact, an entire race stands out as a hero to me. Black people have perhaps been more persecuted against than any other race, and yet they retain their happiness. Surviving slavery, famines, wars, and persecution, it must be hard to stay happy and optimistic. Yet somehow, they stay content. This makes them my heroes. Humanity itself started in Africa. Africans have forever been plagued with disunity, and yet they have been banded together by language, tradition, family, and other tribal roots. There may be no feeling in the entire world like a tribe of Africans singing harmoniously in Swahili, Mende, or another such language. The brotherhood and loyalty, the feeling of family felt with every beat of the drum, every clap of the hands, every grin on every dark face, this makes them heroes to me. Black people in general can have this feeling, not just tribal Africans. Whether it be the old songs of the African tribes, or the moaning songs of the chain-gang slaves taken from their homes, or the gospel spirituals sang by the in the fields, or the blaring brass and saxophones by Jazz bands, or the slang rap of the ghetto gangs, or the rallying war songs of modern-day African freedom-fighters, music has made the black people tight-knit and loyal, and this is what makes them my heroes.

Scarred for life: An emotional tale

My biggest scar? Or my deepest scar? I shall tell about both. My biggest scar runs across my eyebrow, and I got it when I lost a fight with a chair at my grandmother’s house. Picture this: a valiant, braved faced young toddler with surprising good looks for being a 4-year-old, standing on a chair. I was standing on the chair next to that guy. We were having a contest, my cousin and I, of how well we could rock back and forth on the chairs. Little did I know this experience would give me mucho pain-o. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet learned that my cousin usually wins everything I try. (Except girls’ hearts, but that’s a given.) We rocked back and forth until I finally lost balance, crashing to the ground with the chair bearing down on me, looking for trouble. I punched that chair in the face, and would have won except that the chair has no nerves, or a face to punch. So, the chair roundhouse-kicked me in the eyebrow, and that’s my biggest scar.
My deepest scar runs into my very heart. Many of you know my father is Tom Hansen, government/history/math teacher and tennis coach extraordinaire. If you didn’t previously know this, I guess I just gained your sympathy. Many, many innocent students have been emotionally scarred by him, but not in your most horrific nightmares can you imagine living with him. The scar left by him pierces through my very heart! In fact, I’m fairly certain it pierces all my vital organs. A few of you may have teachers as parents, but it’s still not the same as mine. He’s the kind of guy that will burst into English class demanding to see your math homework. We’re talking about the same guy who walks randomly into Spanish class, rattling off the language like a native of east LA.
My scars are deep, and my complaints few. What you should really take away from this is that I must be a pretty cool guy to have survived chairs and Tom Hansen alike, yet still be able to act fairly normal. Have you gained a new respect for me? If not, you must have seen it all.

The left-handed pen-slinger

I learned to write from my mother, who taught me the alphabet, and also forced me to read ridiculous books that were as old as she was, but in a lot worse condition. After not too long, I graduated into the first grade, and was able to have the opportunity to write without my mother looking over my shoulder. I was equipped with a paper and a pencil the size of a horse's leg, determined to show that paper who’s boss!  No paper has ever had the alphabet written on it as intensely as the paper I was given that fateful day. Well, that last sentence is probably a lie. I’m sure some ancient Phoenician dude carved the alphabet into a wall of stone or something. Carving is some serious business.

My next memory was of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rasmussen. She and I didn’t get along, because for some reason she didn’t like that I was left handed. We’d be learning the truly useless technique of cursive that we would never use after elementary school, and she would politely explain how you write a certain cursive letter. She would then explain the stroke of your hand, and how this will work for everyone but Talin and Jolynn, because they’re left handed. It will especially not work for Talin, because he’s an idiot. (She didn’t really say this, it’s just implied.) Then she’d look at me really intently until it got awkward. To her, I being left handed was something that could have been completely avoided if I wasn’t such an idiot. Of course, I hardly noticed her intent stares because I didn’t pay much attention in class back then. Eight years later, not much has changed.

I moved on to other teachers, including a swearing lumberjack with a profound vocabulary and a degree in elementary education. He taught me the wonders of poetry, and had me bind it into a book of poems that I was quite proud of. It was the genius work of a sixth-grader, if there is such a thing.

I further advanced into jr. high, braving strange English teachers that were missing a finger, or threatened to rip my arm off and beat me with the bloody end. Usually, though, that threat would be too long, so she’d just give me a sickly-sweet smile and say “pay attention, or I’ll rip your lips off.” Now, a human who has had his or her lips ripped off their face is not an especially attractive human, though I’m confident I could have pulled it off. After all, I am Talin Hansen. We mostly did random vocabulary words that I have not used since that class. Now, a few of you may know that when assigned something boring, I like to liven it up by adding a twist. Making up a ridiculously random story, doing everything with a theme, and adopting an Australian accent are all techniques I’ve used in the past. So we’d use a theme every week for vocabulary, and write all our sentences on the topic of peanut butter, monkeys, man-eating warthogs that wear ninja masks and wield large machetes, and other such nonsense. It was an interesting year, at least.

Since being in high school, I’ve learned many things about English. These include never use the word ‘you’ in a persuasive essay, don’t write in a monotone, and find better substitutes for your words. Most important is that even if you think you have the best essay in the history of mankind and nobody could ever come close to how cool it is, Mrs. Wakefield probably already thought of a much better one, yesterday.

So this is how I learned to write. Not very impressive, as this paper itself testifies. Then again, I am Talin Hansen, so maybe I have a chance of distracting you from my bad writing using my rugged good looks and boyish charm. You have to admit, it’s probably worth a shot.