Shouting at Smart Systems

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

“It’s not an unquestionable and indisputable fact that Jim Brown was the greatest running back of all time,” I shouted at the people in my Smart TV. “I think it was Walter Payton, but at least I recognize that’s an opinion. You only think Jim Brown was better, because he was the first greatest running back of all time, and we all bow to the tyranny of firsts, and most of the time we do so because we don’t know any better.”

If we compare George Washington to any president who followed, GW almost always wins, because he set a whole bunch of templates and precedents that most of the presidents who followed, followed. But he had an unfair advantage of setting precedents and precedents, because there were no official U.S. presidents before him. By that logic, if either James Buchanan or Chester A. Arthur were the first U.S. president, they would be considered the best president of all time.

Similarly, those who saw Jim Brown play saw the first great running back of all time, and there was no one to compare him to for about a decade. He set the template for great running backs, and he set all the precedents. Yet, the difference between Jim Brown and the next great running back narrowed over time. I never saw Jim Brown play live –so go ahead and dismiss me from this argument if that is required– but from what few highlights I’ve seen of Jim Brown’s runs, he was one of the greatest running backs who ever played the game, but he was mostly a bruising back in the mold of the great 70s back Earl Campbell. Both of them were historical anomalies and dominant in their respective eras, but were they that much better at gaining yards and scoring touchdowns from the running back position than Eric Dickerson, Tony Dorsett, Marshall Faulk, Barry Sanders, or Emmit Smith? Of course it’s impossible to compare men from their eras, and we can never remove them from their era and place them in another for a solid debate, but I believe the one man who could match all five of those men and outdo them in their respective primes was Walter Payton.

“Okay,” my TV shouted back at me, “but is your argument based on objective reasoning, or was Walter Payton the first, great running back you saw?

I said, “Huh?” and I hate to say huh in any setting, because I think it makes us sound unintelligent, but even though I knew my new TV was a Smart TV, I was not prepared for it to shout back at me.

“You were too young to witness the great Jim Brown in his prime,” my Smart TV explained. “So, Walter Payton was essentially your first entrant into the greatest running back of all time argument for you, which nullifies your argument by making you as guilty of bowing to the tyranny of firsts from your own perspective.”

“I never thought of that before,” I said. I didn’t want a Smart TV, and I told my dog that. I just wanted a television set to watch programs on. Now that it is in my living room, reminding me how intellectually inconsistent I can be, I resent it. I got used to the neighborhood kids outsmarting me, and then the raccoons and squirrels, but I never considered how humiliating it would be when one of my appliances began outsmarting me.

*******

They call it a Smart TV, but its intelligent design does not respond to the initial physical commands I give it from its remote control. I push those buttons and nothing happens. The message between the button and the primary mechanism fails in a way that obnoxiously requires me to push that button again. The tyranny of firsts applies here too, as the relative and relatively arbitrary definition of intelligence between humans is usually reserved for the guy who gets the answer first. Those of us who need to process a question, and often come up with a better, more creative answer than the first guy, usually get left in the dust. We’re forced to live in this land of unrealistic expectations for smart, but Smart TVs apparently are not. They require a second level of processing that requires a second push of a button to process the commands we initiate on our remote controls. It’s not limited to TVs either, Smart ovens, fridges, and cars all have buttons, and they never execute their functions on the first push of a button.

“It’s not us,” my Smart Oven replied. “You’re just a two-push-button guy.”

I had no idea what that meant, until I began to see how our world has progressed from switches to buttons, and I found myself “two-pushing” every button around me. I never chose to be this way, and when I see people one-pushing their way into a room, I’m like, “What the hell is going on here?” I’m guessing my two-push relationship with buttons was set upon me as a result of who I was, or what I did, in a former life. I don’t know if I was so successful pushing buttons the first time through, in that former life, that I obnoxiously held it over everyone’s head in an arrogant manner that defined my existence, and the forces that be exacted existential retribution on my current life. I say life, because I’ve never been a one button pusher, and this isn’t something that we wake up in the morning with. It takes an outside force, be it a family member or Smart appliance to recognize.

If it happened sooner, and a friend told me that I was probably doomed to pushing a button twice my whole life, I would’ve called them foolish. “I’ll only have to push buttons once when I get older. I’ll eventually get this all figured out.” It hasn’t happened yet. If you told me this when I was younger, I probably would’ve assumed that it was the quick-twitch of youth that led me to carelessly miss the button in some way, and as I grew older, I’d slow down enough to push that button more carefully that first time through. It hasn’t happened yet, and I have to say that kind of shocks me, figuratively. So, either I haven’t slowed down, or I’m just going to have to get used to pushing every button twice now, because someone monkeyed with my soul somewhere along the line.

*******

I know I should be using Smart tags at this point in history, but I just can’t pull the trigger on that purchase yet. I already have enough Smart things in my life, and I can’t imagine having one on my keys, on my wallet, or in my pocket in anyway. Until I’m brave enough to put Smart things in close proximity to my precious things, I’m going to lose things that are precious to me.

When we lost things, some say, “They’re always in the last place you look.” To which, the more clever say, “Of course they’re always the last place you look, because once you find it, you’re not going to look in any other places.” I’ve lived the former line so often that I appreciate the humor of the latter line, but my question is “How come they’re never in the first place I look?” The tyranny of firsts does not apply here, as the items I lose are never, and I do mean NEVER, in the first place I look? They’re never in the car, which is the first place I look, and they’re not in the bathroom, the first place I went when I returned home, and they’re never in the first pocket I check in my ensemble? Now, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say something about circumstance, chance, and whatever rationale you point to that suggests it’s not a product of some otherworldly design. All I can say is, “You aren’t there. You don’t see how it has to be someone, something, or some otherworldly force messing with my mind.” I can’t hear these Smart devices laughing when you tell me it’s not logical to blame intangible forces, but I know they enjoy watching my struggle.

Cynically Yours

January 8, 2026January 13, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

“Hi. My name is Rilaly, and I’m a cynic.”

I’m in recovery, which as any alcoholic will tell you is a stage in a process of trying to deprive ourselves of something we used to really enjoy. I never set out to enjoy ruining someone’s optimistic joy, but it felt so right to blast someone out of the water for saying something so nice about a person, place, or thing that I felt sophisticated and intelligent when I wiped that stupid and sanctimonious grin off their face. It wasn’t an emotional compulsion that drove me to do it, or medical, it was rhetorical.

**“Don’t you just hate happy people?”**

Very few people actually drop that line, but how many of us think it? Being right and wrong isn’t the primary driver of the cynic. We just want to put a chink in the silly narratives naive people have believed for so long.

Most cynics would tell you that’s a bunch of bilge. “It’s all about facts, and if you can’t see that, you’re naive. Science and Math. That’s what we rely on.” But what if we’re wrong? What if the optimists could provide incontrovertible evidence of our errors, what would we say? We’d smile a chagrined smile and walk away, saving our ammunition for another day, because if we learn how to sing the song, we can never be truly wrong.

“Cynicism is not necessarily equal to or greater than intelligence,” is the mantra we cynics use in our sessions. “It’s camouflage we use to conceal what we don’t know.”

I loved that phrase until fellow cynic, Julie Anne, obnoxiously argued that, “We need to remember that just because it’s negative doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”

Did you have to reread that line? I know I did, rather I had to ask Julie Anne to repeat it as if I didn’t hear it the first time. It’s one of those down-the-stairs comments that doesn’t land until we’re walking away from it and into someone with that stupid grin on their face. When we run into that happy person who believes in things, they say things like, “I believe most people are good, until they prove me wrong.” Yow! Kabang! We hit them with our best shot, and we hit them with something negative that isn’t “necessarily true.” The argument about whether people are generally good or evil is difficult to prove, of course, but our certitude often relies on what appeals to us most, which basically proves Julie Anne’s line of thought.

We all start out naive. We believe our parents are good people and excellent stewards and beacons, until they prove us wrong. We believe our teachers have our best interests in mind, until our tweed and elbow patches professor opens his lecture with, “Everything they taught us in school was wrong!” Cynicism almost feels like evolution at a certain point, until even the most optimistic learn to frame their optimistic beliefs with proper qualifiers, like, “I’m not saying the world doesn’t suck, but …” It’s their way of trying to express themselves without everyone dogpiling them with synonyms of naive, and there’s nothing worse than being called naive.

Several individuals saved us from the dreadful indignity of that embarrassing label by introducing us to the comfy confines of cynicism. Once we gave the ‘everyone is awful’ idea a test drive, we discovered no one would call us a fool ever again. It’s foolproof. It might not necessarily be true, as Julie Anne would remind us, but being wrong is far better than being foolish.

We reserve the term fool for people who believe in people, places, and things. Once we became cynical, we joined in on the laughter, “How could they actually believe in that?” we asked our fellow cynics. We felt like we finally belonged. We found it much safer to believe most people are full of crud, and everyone from our parents to religious people to world leaders, and the most virtuous and honorable are probably a bunch of hypocrites who go home and beat their wives … when they aren’t our cheating on them (cue the laughter). “Imagine being them,” we say to conclude our laughter with the laughers, “believing that most people have the best intentions.” The comfy confines of cynicism aren’t limited to laughter and a sense of belonging, as it can provide a compelling sense of spiritual fulfillment when we learn how the world works, the real world.

The way the world works is so overwhelming and confusing when we’re young that it becomes our life’s mission to try to understand it. Our friends, and our unsafe, adult entertainment comedies taught us all of these delicious decoders that we couldn’t wait to use on those who don’t know. When we eventually crossed the sootstone arch (as opposed to the pearly gates of the optimistic believers) into the real world, we realized that if donned cynical camouflage it concealed what we don’t know, and we couldn’t wait for our peers to recognize how prepared we were. Our curtain raiser was directed at The Big Guys, because The Big Guys are honored, respected, and admirable, and their teardown is much more valuable to those in the know.

**“I heard the rumors, Danny,” Andrew Wood once wrote in a song called Mr. Danny Boy.**

After hearing that song, I did some research on Mr. Danny Boy, and I discovered it was about a man named Mr. Danny Thomas, who was considered one of the most honorable, admirable, and virtuous men who ever lived. I believed those rumors, because who wouldn’t? The naive didn’t. They thought he was honorable, admirable, and virtuous.

As with every characteristic, we strive to be the most. We want to be the funniest person in the room, the richest, the strongest, and the best-looking. We may not strive to be the most cynical in the same vein, but we strive for the most sophisticated in our knowledge. And what do cynics do when we encounter their competition? We don’t strive to be more cynical, we call our fellow cynic out.

When we relentlessly go after the Big Guys, for example, there will always be some guy who seeks to diminish our “Most cynical” crown with the joke, “You just hate that guy, just admit it. The guy could cure cancer, and you’d still have a problem with him.” That guy, in this particular scenario, is Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz, (aka Mr. Danny Thomas). All right, he didn’t cure cancer, but the incredible strides this man made during his life were largely unimaginable before he started in. He founded St. Jude’s Hospital, which has a documented history of making a significant dent in the number of children who suffer from, and die, from cancer.

When I hear that, my cynical side immediately rears its ugly head and says, “Ok, but Danny Thomas was an actor, and a celebrity. He dealt in a world of make-believe, so I’m guessing he didn’t actually found St. Jude’s Hospital. He didn’t found it in the way we normally associate an individual founding a hospital. He was probably a celebrity figurehead who attached his name to a process that was already in place but needed the type of funding a celebrity can attract by attaching his name to the founding. He probably took a photo with a massive pair of scissors, cut some tape, and raised a whole bunch of money for the hospital by doing so.”

Every celebrity seeks to show the public “another side” that displays the idea that they are well-rounded, sympathetic, empathetic, and heroically altruistic. In my humble opinion, that level of cynicism achieves a decent scorecard in most cases, but not here. Records state that Mr. Danny Thomas was actually a hands-on founder of St. Jude’s Hospital. Records state that St. Jude’s came into existence because Danny Thomas willed it into existence through decades of personal labor, fundraising, organizing, and strategic decision‑making. Records also indicate that Mr. Thomas involvement was not just some celebrity endorsement or involving a some sort of superficial or symbolic attachment. Records state that when it came to the founding of St. Jude’s Hospital, Danny Thomas was the man.

Defeating cynical sides, as they rear their ugly heads, is equivalent to that old childhood game Whack-A-Mole, as they help me appear smarter and more sophisticated in the way the real world works, in a way the average joe never will. One little head pops up and says, “Well then he probably found a way to turn this founding into some sort of money-making venture.” Another one pops up and says, “He probably benefitted from it financially in someway we’ll never know.” Again, we might be able to say that about most celebrity-backed ventures, as even the most charitable celebrities get paid administrative fees for handling the various activities of their altruistic venture, they get paid for speaking engagements on behalf of the charity, various appearance, they get their travel to and from paid, and/or some “other expenses” that aren’t illegal, but they’re dubious bullet points that the dubious-minded can recite when that debate arrives. Again, not here. There’s no credible evidence — none — that Danny Thomas ever profited or benefitted financially from St. Jude’s in anyway. Every historical record, nonprofit filing, and investigative report shows the same thing: he founded the hospital, built its fundraising arm, and spent decades raising money for it without ever taking a salary or receiving any financial benefits for those efforts.

Some records suggest St. Jude’s Hospital has helped save or ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of children through direct treatment, and millions more through research that raised global survival rates. I’ve performed searches through search engines, and AI, asking for holes in this narrative. I’ve asked AI to approach the narrative regarding Danny Thomas founding St. Jude’s Hospital from a cynical perspective and provide for me information that a skeptic could latch onto when they’re seeking to know the real story behind Danny Thomas and St. Jude’s hospital, and AI can find no holes.

Yet, if you were alive during the early 90s after Mr. Danny Thomas died, and commentators were largely immune from character defamation lawsuits, you heard the rumors from standup comedians, shock jocks on the radio, and/or the cynical grapevine that grew from the fertilizer they created. You heard the rumors, and you laughed, because you knew there had to be more to the story. You also loved hearing the rumors, because they validated and vindicated what you thought all along. There had to be something.

Even if those rumors had any basis in fact—which they didn’t, according to every substantial news source, historical document, and/or any source that we might call substantive—the product of those rumors made substantial philanthropic and altruistic efforts and commitments to try to help children survive their fight against cancer.

“He wasn’t all that virtuous, let me tell you something,” those hanging from the cynical grapevine yelled with glee. “Let me tell you something ...”

“But Danny Thomas’s goal,” we should’ve said but didn’t, because we didn’t want to damage our cynical bona fides, “was to help kids suffering from cancer.”

“I know, but I just can’t stand it when someone thinks they’re all high and mighty.”

“Fair enough, but what does it say about you that you prefer to focus on the rumors as opposed to his considerable effort and commitments to help kids fight cancer?”

“I see the world in black and white,” is the preferred mantra of the cynic. “I can’t help it, I’m a facts-oriented person.”

I know that line, because I lived with it for so many decades that I will forever be in remission, but I’m trying. I’m trying to see some light in the darkness of the cozy comfort of cynicism. I’m also trying to learn that “Just because it’s negative doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true,” but it just feels so facts-oriented to believe the worst of humanity, until they prove me wrong.

Never Meet Your Heroes

January 7, 2026January 13, 2026 RilalyLeave a comment

“Never meet your heroes,” they say. “They’ll only disappoint you.”

“OK, but what do you want them to do for you?”

This is the question I ask those who have had “disappointing experiences” meeting a noteworthy figure. Working at a hotel front desk, I met several stars, celebrities, and other notable figures. I don’t know if I ever worshipped at the feet of America’s definition of royalty, but I eventually met so many of them that I didn’t treat them much different than anyone else. They didn’t treat me any better than anyone else, but they didn’t treat me worse either. They treated me with as much as respect as they would anyone else, but, and this is the huge BUT of this article, I didn’t expect anything else.

I’ve watched you interact with them in the hotel lobby, however, and I saw how disappointed you were when you walked away. It took me a while to realize that it’s not the individuals we admire who disappoint us, it’s the interaction. We wanted our experience to somehow, and in some way, be as meaningful to them as it was to us.

Most of the notable figures I’ve met aren’t great, awful, charismatic, boring, nice, unkind, dismissive or engaging. Most notable figures are common people who just happened to have something fortunate happen to them along the way. I’m not saying they didn’t earn their notable status, or that they weren’t talented or skilled in their arena, but almost all of them were nothing more than a face in the crowd of skilled and talented people striving for advancement at one point in their career. Most of the actors we admire happened to fit a character better than everyone else in that particular casting room, and they were in the right place at the right time that helped them secure that role that defined them. We developed a relationship with that character, and when we met the actor who played that character, we expected them to consummate our relationship to that character in a way that left us satisfied. I’ve seen that on your faces, and I’ve seen the way your shoulders dropped weightlessly after they politely shook your hand and said, “Hello, nice to meet you.” You expected them to do something more than be nice and polite to you. You wanted them to acknowledge how important you are to them, because they wouldn’t be where they are without people like you, and you were so disappointed that they were just politely kind to you.

I also think that when we run into them in a hotel lobby, we’re kind of disappointed to meet Robin Williams. We wanted to meet Mork from Ork. Robin Williams, as it turned out, was a little quiet and withdrawn. Was he polite and nice, sure, but I expected him to be a little crazy like he was when he was a guest on The Tonight Show.

“I never know what to say to them,” a notable young figure confessed when we finally made it into the elevator to escape the hotel lobby.

This notable young actor was kind to those who were gob smacked by his sudden appearance in a hotel lobby. He said, “Hello!” to them, he shook hands, and he even took photos with them. A good time was had by all, but the young celebrity ended the encounter somewhat prematurely by telling them he had to go. We went up to his hotel room, and he had nothing to do there, no one to call, and nowhere to go. He just wanted to keep his appearance in the lobby brief, so he didn’t do or say anything to disappoint his adoring fans. I was stunned to hear him admit they made him nervous. My takeaway was that he didn’t want to do or say anything to shatter their belief that there was something special about him.

**“There’s no way they can live up to your expectations, and they know that.”**

The young actor knew something it would take me a while to gather. The impressions we have of Hollywood stars is often based on their highlight reels, and everything they do in person can only diminish those idealized images we have of them. If he stayed in that lobby too long, he might accidentally slip into someone like himself when we prefer him to stay in character.

“You made one of my favorite comedies of all time,” one of the fans said when we were all still in lobby. The actor thanked him for the compliment, and he smiled when the man went into detail, far too much detail, regarding the nature of his compliment. The actor was as kind and gracious as he could be. The actor would never tell this fan how little he had to do with that production. The actor was the face we saw, knew, and attached to the production, but all we have to do is watch the credits to see how many names are involved in the production. His was the most notable name, and one of the primary reasons we purchased a ticket, but he was just one of numerous names involved in its production. He would never tell a fan how little his involvement was in the day-to-day activities of bringing that movie to the fan.

Our favorite actors had our favorite lines written for him, a director asked for several takes from which to choose, and the editors and other players mastered the final cut, but we only know the star. When we insinuate that our favorite star from our favorite production is hilarious, how do they live up to our expectations in one take in a hotel lobby? How do they create a worthwhile experience for us? We won’t think of it that way, of course, and we’ll tell our friends, family, Yahoo readers, and Redditors that we don’t find him “as funny in person, as he is in the movies.” We don’t intentionally compare them to their highlight reels, but it’s how we know them, and it’s tough to shake those images.

We would all love to be famous but imagine reaching a point in that stratosphere where we end up disappointing everyone we meet. Imagine being Michael Jordan, the most notable sports figure in the world for a time. To avoid disappointing fans or damaging his legacy, Michael Jordan decided the smartest thing for him to do was hide in the hotel rooms of cities he visited. When his friends, teammates, and family went out on the town, enjoying everything those cities had to offer, the greatest, richest athlete of his generation hid in hotel rooms.

Michael Jordan might be a very charming person who knows how to use his dynamic personality to reach most people, but if we met him at a Walmart, Michael Jordan couldn’t possibly live up to the expectations we have of Michael Jordan.

Kelsey Grammer was an hysterical and charming presence in our homes for decades, but if we ran into him at a convenience store, purchasing potato chips, we’d find out he’s not Frasier. He’s probably a nice, polite man, but boring! He’s probably going to be incapable of living up to the montage of our favorite moments on Frasier, unless he agreed to do our run-in numerous times, so we could select our favorite version of the encounter.

Of all the notable figures I met, I met a few who raised my eyebrows. I knew they were checking into our hotel beforehand, and I rehearsed our interaction a couple of times, they didn’t, and I knew they wouldn’t, because why would they?

“He’s likely going to be more interested in what women think.”

When I met one of my favorite musicians, I must admit I was a little gobsmacked. I told him how much I enjoyed his music, and he put a hand out for me to shake and said, “Thanks. How you doing? Nice to meet you.”

While shaking his hand, I was prepared to detail for him how much I enjoyed his music. He was never in Billboard magazine, and his music was relatively obscure, so I wanted him to know how much he affected one fan’s life. I flirted with the notion that, due to the idea that he was relatively obscure, he needed to hear what I had to say.

As I began my little rehearsed appreciation speech, I noticed he was already looking over at my co-worker, a beautiful twenty-something woman. Other than being an artistic genius, I realized this guy was a guy, and guys are far more interested in what women think. Even forty-to-fifty-year-old married men care more about what women think than some fella. Other than knowing that I was dying to meet this man, my co-worker had never heard of this man, and the two of us established that fact before he stepped up to the front desk. He quickly picked up on her unfamiliarity, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to chat with her, and he had no desire to talk to me, one of his biggest fans. He flirted with her in a polite, instinctive manner, and she dealt with it well. She was quite accustomed to anonymous men paying attention to her, regardless their age. His flirtation wasn’t cringey. He just dropped a few clever lines on her to get a laugh out of her, and after she laughed politely, he moved on, hotel key in hand. He had no real interest in her, but he had absolutely no interest in talking to me or finding out that I was a huge fan. He was a little dismissive, but he was polite, and that’s what I expected.

Before going out on message boards to detail for the world how rude this guy was, I put myself in his shoes. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t want to waste my A-Game material on some fella I just met either. Men, all men, want to make an impression on women, especially when those women are young and beautiful. Some readers might stubbornly insist that the guy was creepy, but this characteristic of males starts somewhere around junior high, and it never leaves us, no matter how old we are. No matter how much notoriety a man achieves, their barometer is still set on what women think of them. The woman may do nothing more than chuckle, smile, or say, “Isn’t that interesting,” but it’s still better than what some anonymous man, working an entry level job might think.

“How can they possibly top the impression we already have of them?”

Movies are shot to make actors appear tall, of average height, or in a way to prevent us from being distracted by his height. They have makeup personnel to prevent us from seeing how bad her skin is. They have hair stylists to prevent them from having a bad hair day. They have dental personnel on retainer (no pun intended) to prevent us from seeing their yellow tooth in the movie. Those teams gather to help the actor form an idealized image on screen. Once those teams complete the idealized image, the presentation teams take over. If the star doesn’t appear charming enough, happy enough, or strong enough in a scene, the director reshoots it until they do. Then the editors watch the final product, and if necessary, they might call the actor back to reshoot a particular scene that wasn’t perfect. If any of those characteristics are impossible to achieve on a day of shooting, they don’t shoot that day. So, when we meet them in a hotel lobby, on an otherwise boring Thursday, expect them to be different than what we expected, because most of us are, and our lasting impression of them will probably be unfair, because that’s who we are.

Bob Dylan Refused to Meet Elvis Presley

Bob Dylan learned firsthand how meeting his heroes could prove disappointing. After Robert Allen Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, he entered into the inner sanctum of top-tier entertainers, and most of the individuals in that inner circle likely disappointed Dylan. As evidence of this when the greatest entertainer of his generation, Elvis Presley extended an invite to Dylan to meet the king, Dylan turned it down.

It sounds odd, I know, considering who Bob Dylan was, is, and what he became, but Elvis inspired Dylan early on. If that was the case, why would Dylan turn a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the man down? There are reasons listed in the article, but my guess is that they all culminated in the idea of Elvis, and the image of Elvis, proving so instrumental in Bob Dylan’s early career. Dylan probably strove to live up to what he considered the Elvis ideal. Why would Dylan want to risk damaging that by actually meeting the man in real life? Dylan was never as famous as Elvis, of course, but my guess is Dylan didn’t want Elvis to disappoint him in the manner so many others had. Not Elvis. Imagine meeting that man, that guy, that hero of yours who, in his own way, caused you to be better at whatever it is you do. What could that man possibly do, or say, to encourage you onward, and why would you actually want to meet that man if he couldn’t possibly do anything but disappoint you.

“Heroes? You’re talking about heroes? I’m not some seven-year-old sitting in front of a TV in my pajamas watching Superman cartoons. I’m a grown man. I don’t have heroes.” We age out of hero-worship, but there is always a super-secret part of us that remembers our childhood heroes fondly. They help us rekindle happened to be a very special time in our lives, and there’s no way they can live up to such lofty and unfair expectations. So, the next time you have the unexpected chance to meet one of your heroes, remember to set your lasers to “reasonable expectations”, or follow Bob Dylan’s path and just walk away to keep your unrealistic myths alive. They won’t be hurt by it, trust me, and they might actually be relieved, because they won’t have to live up to yet another person’s unrealistic expectations of them.