A Hero with American Cheese
Short Fiction - Humor - First person narrative
We caught glimpses of it as we shuffled into the auditorium. Intermittent lasers of gold shot through the serving line procession and snatched our attention like a flash of bare flesh, or a dollar bill in the dirt. We filed up to the front, where managers, directors, and VPs stood at a serving table, smiling threats and doling out burgers and potato salad. It was there that the hundred or so of us here for the safety celebration lunch got a full view of the obscenity. It sat alone on a table next to them in all its unabashed glory - a slow flowing, golden glowing fountain of nacho cheese. The shimmering triple-tiered spectacle undulated like a stripper at the stage pole. It stood there shameless and naked, an icon of our age, a monument to excess, gluttony, and poor taste. I filled my plate and retreated to a table in the rear where some friends were laughing and eating.
Ed winked as I sat and turned to the guy seated next to him.
"Hey, RD, five bucks if you do a header in the cheese fountain."
I checked Randy Dan for his response. His face contorted as he tried to suppress a laugh, but he managed to avoid spraying out a mouthful of burger with his muffled reply.
"What?"
"A header - full coverage from the neck up. Who's with me?" Frank reached into his wallet and slapped a five on the table.
"I'm in for twenty." I was caught up in the moment.
"Another twenty here." Ken matched my offer.
In a few seconds, one hundred and five dollars lay on the table. RD shook his head in disbelief, but he kept looking at the cash and then back up at the fountain. He was feeling the pressure.
Randy Dan is not one to take a dare lightly, especially this one. Here was a chance to become a company legend and make art at the same time, not to mention over a hundred bucks. Randy Dan is a big, fair-headed Midwesterner. Eating is, and always has been much more to him than a biological necessity. He is a fan of the I.F.O.C.E. (International Federation of Competitive Eaters) and once even tried to launch a fantasy competitive eating league, but it never took off. Randy Dan will proudly show off his wings (a trophy from a college hot wing-eating contest) to anyone wandering past his cube.
Until a year ago, RD's shape attested to his fascination with the gastronomical arts. Then he got a little healthy living religion and his weight bounced around as he experimented with a variety of diets. He ultimately reached a new, lower mass equilibrium and achieved dimensional stability in the horizontal plane (we are both engineers, and favor such techno-geeky phraseology).
Roger heard the challenge from his table behind ours, and felt the train gaining speed.
"Hey, I'm in ... for twenty."
In another two minutes we were over four hundred dollars. RD stopped eating. His eyes darted from the money pile to the fountain and around at his friends. He looked like a cornered deer. Then his eyes caught mine and the same lightning thought struck in our brains - heroes. I knew he was going for it. He shoved back from the table, sucked in a big breath and headed up front where the management clan had reconvened for the door prize drawing. He turned back to me and squeaked, "Hold the cash for me."
A few weeks earlier we were sitting in his cube wasting time when the topic of heroes came up. Randy Dan was going off about some corporate mega-slob, how he'd started with nothing, made billions, revolutionized retailing, dah-dah-dah.
Randy Dan isn't his real name and I'm not even sure how he got tagged with it. Andy is his real name, but we already had one of those in the group when he hired in, so maybe that had something to do with it. On the other hand, nicknames like his are often born of slurred, drunken misspeaks, or from the punch lines of off-color jokes. In any case, the name stuck and only a few of us even remember his real name anymore.
RD clings to concepts like truth and lies, right and wrong, and heroes and villains. He holds them close and warily, like a winning poker hand. Personally, I'm too cynical to believe in much more than a good argument, but the topic of heroes appealed to me, so I engaged.
"Big deal - so he's a genius at lowering standards of quality and taste, exploiting third world kids, adding no value to anything, and turning a huge profit all the while. He is truly a master capitalist. - doesn't make him a hero."
"Well, you couldn't do it, and neither can most anybody else." Randy-Dan declared. He punctuated with an authoritative pointing of the nose, sensing that he'd scored an early slam dunk with that retort. And he had a valid point: a necessary trait of a hero is the ability to do what most of us can't. Necessary, but not sufficient.
"Most of us can't lick our crotches either, but that doesn't make heroes of dogs and contortionists." I stayed in the game. "How can someone so self-serving possibly be a hero?"
He rolled his eyes and frowned. "So then you're saying a successful entrepreneur can't be a hero?"
"Right ... and neither can politicians. If they have any integrity at all, they won't be successful."
"Okay then, if a hero has to have to have all that integrity, who's your hero?"
The question stumped me, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Lao Tzu"
RD erupted in a laugh and choked out, "Loud Sue? Who the hell is that and what did she do?"
"He is the author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, you rube. And all he did was sacrifice everything he had to enrich the spiritual lives of millions for the last two thousand years."
Randy Dan is a good Christian, so he accepted the premise that heroes have to sacrifice for the benefit of others. We kept the topic up for a while longer, and refined the concept a little, but never really settled on the complete and definitive qualities that make a hero.
I'd forgotten all about that debate on heroes until today. As RD walked up front, I saw his pace slow and uncertainty creep into his gait. At the fountain, he started mugging and grinning and we all knew it was over. He was backing out.
Roland, our site VP (an institutional hero) began grandstanding for the door-prize drawing at this point. He closed his eyes, waved outstretched arms, and made a big show of a blind and fair drawing. He opened one eye and shot an annoyed frown at this newcomer threatening to upstage him.
Meanwhile, Randy-Dan, oblivious to the posturing VP right behind him, was putting on a show of his own. He stood at the fountain with one foot raised, hands together over his head, and leaning towards the cheese in the manner of a swimmer preparing to dive. He was still grinning and didn't notice that he stood in a cheese slick left by sloppy nacho-munchers. The blind VP groped for the drawing box and struck Randy Dan, sending him into a slow, wobbling pirouette. He caught himself, over-corrected, and then spun for a complete revolution. He teetered for a second and toppled face-first into the fountain, knocking it off the back of its table.
Roland opened his eyes in time to see Randy Dan's dottering dance, and watched the dive with a look of unsympathetic alarm. He flashed a phony, self-conscience smile for the crowd and helped Randy-Dan to his feet, keeping one eye on the room. When the laughter and clamor quieted, Roland resumed the drawing. He reached into the decorated box, opened a folded bit of paper, and looked with fake surprise at Randy Dan. Roland swept one arm magnanimously towards RD and announced our cheese head as the winner. He slapped RD on the back and slipped the folded bit of paper back in the box. RD stumbled and staggered - too disoriented to comprehend the most of what was happening.
Though Randy Dan's cheese head was not quite complete (there was a small bare spot on the back of his head) it was close enough to claim his prize. He became four hundred bucks richer and a legend all in an instant.
Afterwards, when I gave him his winnings, we went down to the cafeteria and closed the hero debate.
"Hey Jim, I've got it - heroes are accidental."
Another good point. In this case, the hero certainly arose from a chance and fleeting convergence of a man, a moment and an act.
"Yeah, accidental," I agreed, "...except for the heroes you get down here at the deli counter."
RD snorted and I added, "But you take ol' Roland, now he's no accidental hero."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "C'mon, you don't think that your name was really on that winning slip?"
"Yeah, you're right, he was probably just making up for shoving me into the fountain."
I shook my head. "You're too generous, it was more like him turning a mistake into a victory - that's the stuff that makes a real hero."
RD shrugged. "Maybe, but at least he has a sense of humor."
"How so?"
He grinned a big, broad grin. "The door prize - it was that fountain, and three gallons of cheese."
Ed winked as I sat and turned to the guy seated next to him.
"Hey, RD, five bucks if you do a header in the cheese fountain."
I checked Randy Dan for his response. His face contorted as he tried to suppress a laugh, but he managed to avoid spraying out a mouthful of burger with his muffled reply.
"What?"
"A header - full coverage from the neck up. Who's with me?" Frank reached into his wallet and slapped a five on the table.
"I'm in for twenty." I was caught up in the moment.
"Another twenty here." Ken matched my offer.
In a few seconds, one hundred and five dollars lay on the table. RD shook his head in disbelief, but he kept looking at the cash and then back up at the fountain. He was feeling the pressure.
Randy Dan is not one to take a dare lightly, especially this one. Here was a chance to become a company legend and make art at the same time, not to mention over a hundred bucks. Randy Dan is a big, fair-headed Midwesterner. Eating is, and always has been much more to him than a biological necessity. He is a fan of the I.F.O.C.E. (International Federation of Competitive Eaters) and once even tried to launch a fantasy competitive eating league, but it never took off. Randy Dan will proudly show off his wings (a trophy from a college hot wing-eating contest) to anyone wandering past his cube.
Until a year ago, RD's shape attested to his fascination with the gastronomical arts. Then he got a little healthy living religion and his weight bounced around as he experimented with a variety of diets. He ultimately reached a new, lower mass equilibrium and achieved dimensional stability in the horizontal plane (we are both engineers, and favor such techno-geeky phraseology).
Roger heard the challenge from his table behind ours, and felt the train gaining speed.
"Hey, I'm in ... for twenty."
In another two minutes we were over four hundred dollars. RD stopped eating. His eyes darted from the money pile to the fountain and around at his friends. He looked like a cornered deer. Then his eyes caught mine and the same lightning thought struck in our brains - heroes. I knew he was going for it. He shoved back from the table, sucked in a big breath and headed up front where the management clan had reconvened for the door prize drawing. He turned back to me and squeaked, "Hold the cash for me."
A few weeks earlier we were sitting in his cube wasting time when the topic of heroes came up. Randy Dan was going off about some corporate mega-slob, how he'd started with nothing, made billions, revolutionized retailing, dah-dah-dah.
Randy Dan isn't his real name and I'm not even sure how he got tagged with it. Andy is his real name, but we already had one of those in the group when he hired in, so maybe that had something to do with it. On the other hand, nicknames like his are often born of slurred, drunken misspeaks, or from the punch lines of off-color jokes. In any case, the name stuck and only a few of us even remember his real name anymore.
RD clings to concepts like truth and lies, right and wrong, and heroes and villains. He holds them close and warily, like a winning poker hand. Personally, I'm too cynical to believe in much more than a good argument, but the topic of heroes appealed to me, so I engaged.
"Big deal - so he's a genius at lowering standards of quality and taste, exploiting third world kids, adding no value to anything, and turning a huge profit all the while. He is truly a master capitalist. - doesn't make him a hero."
"Well, you couldn't do it, and neither can most anybody else." Randy-Dan declared. He punctuated with an authoritative pointing of the nose, sensing that he'd scored an early slam dunk with that retort. And he had a valid point: a necessary trait of a hero is the ability to do what most of us can't. Necessary, but not sufficient.
"Most of us can't lick our crotches either, but that doesn't make heroes of dogs and contortionists." I stayed in the game. "How can someone so self-serving possibly be a hero?"
He rolled his eyes and frowned. "So then you're saying a successful entrepreneur can't be a hero?"
"Right ... and neither can politicians. If they have any integrity at all, they won't be successful."
"Okay then, if a hero has to have to have all that integrity, who's your hero?"
The question stumped me, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Lao Tzu"
RD erupted in a laugh and choked out, "Loud Sue? Who the hell is that and what did she do?"
"He is the author of the Tao Te Ching and founder of Taoism, you rube. And all he did was sacrifice everything he had to enrich the spiritual lives of millions for the last two thousand years."
Randy Dan is a good Christian, so he accepted the premise that heroes have to sacrifice for the benefit of others. We kept the topic up for a while longer, and refined the concept a little, but never really settled on the complete and definitive qualities that make a hero.
I'd forgotten all about that debate on heroes until today. As RD walked up front, I saw his pace slow and uncertainty creep into his gait. At the fountain, he started mugging and grinning and we all knew it was over. He was backing out.
Roland, our site VP (an institutional hero) began grandstanding for the door-prize drawing at this point. He closed his eyes, waved outstretched arms, and made a big show of a blind and fair drawing. He opened one eye and shot an annoyed frown at this newcomer threatening to upstage him.
Meanwhile, Randy-Dan, oblivious to the posturing VP right behind him, was putting on a show of his own. He stood at the fountain with one foot raised, hands together over his head, and leaning towards the cheese in the manner of a swimmer preparing to dive. He was still grinning and didn't notice that he stood in a cheese slick left by sloppy nacho-munchers. The blind VP groped for the drawing box and struck Randy Dan, sending him into a slow, wobbling pirouette. He caught himself, over-corrected, and then spun for a complete revolution. He teetered for a second and toppled face-first into the fountain, knocking it off the back of its table.
Roland opened his eyes in time to see Randy Dan's dottering dance, and watched the dive with a look of unsympathetic alarm. He flashed a phony, self-conscience smile for the crowd and helped Randy-Dan to his feet, keeping one eye on the room. When the laughter and clamor quieted, Roland resumed the drawing. He reached into the decorated box, opened a folded bit of paper, and looked with fake surprise at Randy Dan. Roland swept one arm magnanimously towards RD and announced our cheese head as the winner. He slapped RD on the back and slipped the folded bit of paper back in the box. RD stumbled and staggered - too disoriented to comprehend the most of what was happening.
Though Randy Dan's cheese head was not quite complete (there was a small bare spot on the back of his head) it was close enough to claim his prize. He became four hundred bucks richer and a legend all in an instant.
Afterwards, when I gave him his winnings, we went down to the cafeteria and closed the hero debate.
"Hey Jim, I've got it - heroes are accidental."
Another good point. In this case, the hero certainly arose from a chance and fleeting convergence of a man, a moment and an act.
"Yeah, accidental," I agreed, "...except for the heroes you get down here at the deli counter."
RD snorted and I added, "But you take ol' Roland, now he's no accidental hero."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "C'mon, you don't think that your name was really on that winning slip?"
"Yeah, you're right, he was probably just making up for shoving me into the fountain."
I shook my head. "You're too generous, it was more like him turning a mistake into a victory - that's the stuff that makes a real hero."
RD shrugged. "Maybe, but at least he has a sense of humor."
"How so?"
He grinned a big, broad grin. "The door prize - it was that fountain, and three gallons of cheese."
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