They arrived in the middle of the night, a steel cavalry of about 40 Boston area plowmen answering the call to dig out our nation’s capital from this month’s record-setting blizzard. And after a week of nonstop work, they are being hailed as heroes.
An embassy official from South Africa, grateful for getting plowed out, handed one Boston driver a $400 bottle of his country’s wine. Residents are inviting drivers inside for snacks or much-needed bathroom breaks. Television crews have chronicled the plowmen’s labors, and earlier this week, the Washington Post plastered Boston’s crews on its Metro page.
They. Are. Doing. A. Job.
They are not "heroes" in any sense of the word. They have been hired like any other company to perform a specific task, end of story. To call these men heroes is a slap in the face to folks like Mark Allen Wilson, who gave his life to stop a rampaging gunman or Dan McKown, who took two rounds to the abdomen to stop a shooter in a mall. Ordinary guys who put themselves in harm's way when they simply didn't have to do anything, those are the heroes.
Words have meaning. Diluting that meaning by applying the term in places where it doesn't belong cheapens the concept of hero, blurring the lines between a genuinely selfless act and someone punching a time clock. It's high time we recognized that the two are distinctly different; that performing one's job as expected does not automatically make one heroic, and that sometimes, it's just doing your job. Driving a snowplow, while difficult, is hardly the stuff of heroism.
When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less. Indeed.
That is all.
8 comments:
Amen. Random Acts of Patriotism has a post up about another one.
I'm sure that the folks down DC way are grateful to see the plows, but it's all in a day's work.
Hey, if someone wanted to give me a $400 dollar bottle of wine for shoveling the driveway, I'd be cool with it.
Do you consider firefighters and policemen heroes? They are doing the jobs they've been paid to do, so where does that fall?
Laura,
That's an excellent question.
Yes and no. They know when they sign up for the job what they're in for, more or less. That they sign up knowing this is pretty heroic, though.
Cops and firefighters are certainly capable of performing heroic acts in their line of work. Just being a cop or a firefighter, though, doesn't automatically grant one hero status.
Driving a snowplow, OTOH, is not a job fraught with danger. If one of the plow drivers stopped to help a child who fell through some thin ice, that would be heroic.
But showing up and doing a job you're paid to do?
Hell, we're all heroes if that's the case.
My dad is groundskeeper at a hospital. He's getting up there in years, and when ever it snows he's out there busting his ass at 2 in the morning in bitter cold to make sure people can get to the emergency room. One of the last snows had him working 30 hours straight and he's getting close to 60. I can't say that I've ever considered his work to be heroic. Thinking about it, perhaps there is a line there. When most folks would quit and say enough is enough, there are people going above and beyond to get the job done when it must be done. Not all those plowmen are heroes. But I imagine some guys have crossed the threshold.
I got in trouble for putting it in a more blunt fashion on my old ship. I said something along the lines of 'I'll be (expletive) in half sideways before you'll hear me say thank you just for doing your (expletive)ing job!"
Yeah, but they're digging out Washington DC. Not your town or mine.
There's a statue near the National Mall in DC, of some random Union general who happened to defend DC at some point. It depicts him striding along while an angel shades him from the sun with its wings and holds his hat for him. Because it's DC.
Kinda like calling every cheap trash hollywood or T.V. star or third-rate singer a diva....
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