David McElroy

I used to want to be placed onto a pedestal as a hero.

That might not be too surprising. After all, our culture is filled with tales of grandiose heroism that invite people — especially young men — to insert themselves into the stories as the hero. So what’s the big deal that I used to have a burning desire to be a hero?

It’s hard to explain and the full story isn’t pleasant. In fact, there are parts of the story I’m not yet ready to tell publicly. The time will come when I’ll talk about the ways that my life has been affected by the influence of narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. Expect a book when the time is right. Until then, here’s what I’m ready to say.

After I moved recently, I started unpacking boxes and going through papers that hadn’t been touched in decades — some since my teen-age years. The things I found were fascinating and they forced me to see early evidence of emotional problems that I eventually had to deal with in counseling.

One of the most fascinating troves of notes and papers consisted of things I wrote over a three-year period starting when I was 13 years old. They dealt with my first serious crush on a girl.

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This is more of a thought experiment than anything else.

These are the mug shots of a few of the 170 people arrested related to the gang war this past Sunday that left nine people dead in Waco, Texas. How would we be seeing this story differently if this had been the same confrontation between two black gangs in an inner city?

I suspect the reactions would have been different all around. I’d like to consider it briefly.

In the wake of the Baltimore riots — almost exclusively by blacks — I heard condescending things from friends. I’m not talking about nasty Archie Bunker-type racists. I’m talking about middle-class white Americans who simply don’t have a lot of connection to black people.

“That’s just the way those people are,” I remember one woman saying. Another friend said he wasn’t surprised at criminal activity from blacks, because about 80 percent of black men were in prison. (The real figure is closer to 4 percent, if I remember correctly.)

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When John Lennon was 15 years old, the smart people in authority at his school didn’t see him as a world-changing artist.

The headmaster wrote this on Lennon’s report card that year: “He has too many of the wrong ambitions and his energy is too often misplaced.” (Click the graphic above to see a larger version.)

Although he was seen as intelligent, a science teacher wrote, “His work always lacks effort. He is content to ‘drift’ instead of using his abilities.”

In math, he missed the final exam and the teacher wrote, “He is certainly on the road to failure if this goes on.”

His teachers clearly didn’t think much of him. By the accepted standards of the world, he was heading toward failure. Surely he would become a nobody — because he refused to fit into the box that the world was trying to push him into.

Because of his work with the Beatles, though, Lennon turned out to be a pivotal cultural figure of the 1960s. He will be remembered long after everyone has forgotten those experts who judged him.

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