I have lived in four different states, and ate long sandwiches on sourdough bread in at least three of them.  In Massachusetts they called them torpedoes, in California they called them submarines, and when I lived in Kentucky I don’t think I could afford them.  In New York they called them heroes, and so it was that about two years ago when a New Yorker named Steven St. Bernard rushed to the scene of a 7-year old autistic girl falling from a third story window and caught her, he responded to the friends and neighbors who called him a hero by saying, “No.  A hero is a sandwich.  I just saw a kid, that’s it.”

Keyla McCree was dancing on the air conditioning unit of her apartment, when  the accordion-shaped fan that fits between the air conditioner and the window frame opened and she fell through.  When Steven St. Bernard, a bus driver, saw the girl, he reportedly said to himself, “Please let me catch her, please let me catch her.”  He did catch her, and although she brushed against the bushes and slightly touched the ground, she did not receive a scratch.  Mr. St. Bernard, however, tore a tendon in his left shoulder.

Such acts are often called courageous, a concept with which I have struggled much of my life.   That is because, while I spent the decade of my twenties getting through graduate school, internships, and planting the seeds of a family, I was also struggling to overcome my pathological shyness.  In challenging my deepest fears of interacting with people, it became clear that the only antidote to shyness was courage, which many have defined as the combining of fear with action directed toward whatever it is that is feared.   I pushed myself to do as many of the things as I could to face the demons directly– introduce myself to a stranger, or go to a party and actually converse with someone.   This behavioral approach worked, and it keeps on working to this day.

It is interesting to me how “heroes” such as Steven St. Bernard talk about their acts as if they were effortless, as if they felt no fear.  I submit, however, that action that takes place without fear is likely to be stupid and not courageous.  Fearless people are bold, and as they say in the flying world, there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.

Perhaps I am wrong though.  People who do courageous things may experience their acts as effortless because they are practiced at acting in the face of their fears.   I do believe that courage becomes easier the more one takes calculated risks.

While I don’t know this for a fact, it is my guess that the word “hero” to describe a long sandwich is derived from a gringo’s attempt to pronounce the Greek “gyro” sandwich.  I do know that the OED informs us that the word “hero” arose in the 14^th century from the Greek “heros”, meaning “defender” or “protector.”  In that sense, I can think of no better word to describe Mr. St. Bernard’s actions that day in New York.   I have no idea if Mr. St. Bernard achieved his humility the hard way, by facing his fears repeatedly such that his actions felt fearless, but I do suspect that is how he transmogrified his view of his behavior from the status of heroism to that of a sandwich.