The Doctor is In: I Want to Be a Superhero
On alternating Tuesdays, Allan “Doc” Dorison operates on a specific part of popular culture.
by Allan Dorison
When I was a wee lad, of about five or six years old, I wanted to be a superhero. My parents used to take me to Quick Check and pick me up comic books. Every Friday night they used to plop me in front of the TV and we watched The Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. I loved that green guy — breaking s#!t up and saving people. If fact, I wrote my first letter to Mr. Rogers when the Hulk appeared on his show. A few weeks later, I received an autographed picture from Mr. Rogers and my hero, Lou Ferrigno. Later on that summer, I was at a Jamesway and ripped my shirt off pretending to be the Hulk.
As I got older, around seven or eight, my love for comics and becoming a hero progressed. My mom got a job working for the North Bergen Police Department as a violations clerk. It was awesome!!! I got to meet all these cops. It was a dream come true. It was like meeting real-life superheroes. They wore uniforms just like Batman and Spider-Man. They stopped bad guys just like the Hulk and they carried guns like… um, like guys who were bad a$$. This was a good thing and a bad thing. I used to stand in the middle of the street pretending to direct traffic. I got yelled at quite a bit by both of my parents. It was also pretty funny that I used to ask random people if they were crooks. Most of the time they would say “yes”.
One summer, I must have been ten years old, my parents took me to a hotel in the Catskills. You know, that part of Upstate, NY where all the old school Jews used to go for vacation. Think Dirty Dancing… with out the dancing… and with out Patrick Swayze. One night, my mom and dad went to go see a show in the hotel’s theater. I was out playing video games with my friends. The deal I had with my parents was that I’d meet them by the theater two hours from when they dropped me off. So, la-dee-da, two hours pass, and I run to the theater. The first thing I remember seeing is my mom laying over some strange guy. I didn’t know what to make of it. It turned out that she was giving the man CPR. He had just had a heart attack. One pump, two pumps. The man puked all over my mom. She turned him over on his side, cleaned the vomit out of his mouth to make sure he wouldn’t choke on anything, and laid him back down. My mom continued to do CPR for the next half hour until the ambulance arrived. That day my mom was a real superhero.
Looking back now, these are some of my fondest memories and probably some of my most formative ones.
In my tweens, I stopped wanting to be a superhero and started focusing on becoming He-Man. Not so much running around with my shirt off, but yelling “I have the power!” in the middle of Hebrew school. The Rabbis didn’t like this too much. The love of He-Man got me into a love of fantasy, and in eighth grade I met some friends in Jew camp who got me into Dungeons & Dragons. I didn’t realize it, but D&D would play a pivotal role in my quest to become a superhero. The game made me solve problems and act decisively in high-stress situations. Hell, what would I do if a goblin was attacking me from the front, while a band of orcs were attacking me from the side — and in the distance I saw a fire-spewing dragon.
Now, how does this apply to real life, you might ask? Well, think about this situation: there’s a car accident, the driver is screaming, blood coming out of his head, there’s a passenger just sitting there not moving, and a pedestrian laying next to the car is grasping at her chest. D&D prepared me to think out the possible scenarios, to do the right thing when I need to. I would need this type of skill later in life, but I’ll get to that in a bit. (By the way, in both cases I’d roll my 20-sided die.)
I continued playing D&D through college. Then, in 2001 during the days that followed 9-11, I felt incredibly helpless and restless. I didn’t know what to do. I knew there were things that needed to be done, people to help, but I didn’t know where or how. I went to the nearest blood bank and donated. I wish there was more that I could have done at the time… I still do now.
Remember about a paragraph ago I told you to remember that I would need that type of D&D character in crisis decision making? Well, in 2006 I heard about the NYPD Auxiliary Police program. The Auxiliary Police are the eyes and ears of the NYPD. I joined on the spot. It was an intense eight-week course. We went over law, self defense, and basic first aid. We help the police out fill out accident reports, deal with crowd control, patrol the confines of our precinct. Many times we are the first responders, before the “regular cops” get there. Being an Auxiliary has given me the opportunity to fulfill my dream of becoming a superhero. I think it’s our jobs as members of society to help each other out and not be passive watchers like Uatu.
So get off your couch, start helping people out. You can start by taking a class in CPR and First Aid. Try helping an elderly person across the street. Volunteer once a week at a soup kitchen. Help a kid learn to read. There are countless ways you can be a hero, just remember to pack your dice.
Follow one, or all, of these links to begin your road to heroism –
Nationally:
The American Red Cross is made up of 712 chapters and 36 blood services regions which fulfill the mission of the American Red Cross in your community.
Volunteer Match will help you find volunteering opportunities by location and interest area.
In the NYC Area:
New York Cares meets pressing community needs by mobilizing caring New Yorkers in volunteer service.
The New York City Auxiliary Police program is the nation’s largest and finest volunteer crime prevention program. Over 4000 dedicated men and women contribute over one million hours of service each year to their community.
Allan Dorison is the event and conference manager for a major financial bank in New York City. He has previously served in a leadership capacity on the executive boards of several comics based organizations. His video parodies of pop culture phenomena can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/hexo66.
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