A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich :: Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich Essays

Webster has defined nostalgia as a wistful or excessively sentimental, sometimes irregular yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. Nostalgia is a psychological time machine that transplants adults to the good over-the-hill days of another era. Once there, they will find that it is a state of mind, oblivious to actual or imagined barriers. For some it is a pleasant stroll finished yesterday, a simple, less turbulent past. Benjie Johnson is thirteen, Black, and well on his way to being hooked on heroine for good. Benjies wry humor and courage, his hard surface and photograph beneath make it impossible not to care about him. This book confronts a difficult subject and offers no easy solutions. The inner city students I presently teach can relate to much of what Benjie talks about. The Black English used is a variation but a continuation of teach boy vernacular which we saw in the previously mentioned novels. Now I am thirteen, but when I was a chili, it was hard to be a chilly because my block is a tough block and my school is a tough school. Im not trying to cop out on what I do or dont do cause man is man and chile is chile, but I aint a chile no more. Dont nobody want to be no chile cause, for some reason, it just hold you back in a lotta slipway unless you be a rich chile like in some movie picture or like on T.V.where everybody is livin it up and their room is perfect-lookin and their swimmin puddle and their block and their house and they also ridin round in one rollin Cads with a tape-deck playin cool music and with air condition goin.21 The block where Benjie lives is no peace-loving place. People are getting mugged and robbed regularly. After age three when the relatives hold your hand you are on your own in the poorly lighted hallways of the tenement. Walkin through blue, stinky hallways can be hard on anybody, man or chile, but a chile can get snatch in the dark and get his behind parts messed up by s ome weirdo Im talkie bout them sexuals. Soons you get up to leven, twelve and sothey might cool it cause they scared you know where to land a good up punch, dig?