The Problem with [some] Heroes

i will say i've done my fair share of questionably legal, and entirely illegal, things in order to survive financially was i was younger. my biggest rule was that i never stole from an individual or hurt anyone-- but even with that in mind, you'd be amazed at how far our scanners and epson printers have come since the late nineties.

and the problem with heroes, as i've discovered, is that they tell you what you did that allowed them to catch you. in the movies, villains always give away their plan too soon. but that's the movies. in real life, the villain is quiet and it's the hero who says, "i know this bill is counterfeit because it has the same serial number as the other fake bills we've gotten."

note to self: change serial codes next print.

and, in the rare case they do catch you, they give you a way out before trying to stop you. once while photographing doug stanhope's standup comedy act a man came to stop me and it began like this:

"you know you can't take pictures here," he stated, "are you with a company?"

i thought for a second.

"yes," i said, "i'm with a company."

"oh," he said, "have they talked to jim?"

i thought again. this guy is rather helpful.

"yeah," i said, "and jim gave us the go-ahead. thank you."

in all situations i was of no direct threat-- i wasn't carrying a grenade or anything that should be stopped immediately-- but i would expect the heroes to do a better job about it all. once, i was even taught exactly why those counterfeit pens write black on a fake bill and gold on a real bill. and it's easy to fix.

why would you tell someone that?

most recently, i had a talk with my upstairs neighbor as he left the apartment. he was a really nice man and we discussed the downfall of detroit briefly before he decided he might as well tell me that our apartment has had a series of robberies because people have found out how to hack our front door's digital door lock.

i already know how to do that.

unphased, i asked the neighbor how they got into his actual apartment room and beyond the padlock. and without a pause, he explained the mechanics of an easy-to-make extremely versatile lock-picking device nicknamed the "bump key" in full detail. the amount of knowledge that man dropped on me put me just a metal file and thirty minutes away from being able to break back into his apartment and rob him again.

this is why good people get screwed over. there is an awful lot of information just handed to everyone without question. i would never rob someone, but do you know how easy it is to ebay a comcast uniform and knock on doors to see who's home before bump-keying the shit out of the door and making off with a nice iWhateveryouwant?

the problem with heroes-- the type like my upstairs neighbor-- is that they don't know when to keep their mouths shut and it screws over the rest of us. he's the guy who tells the shady homeless man, "yeah, it's just the two of us young kids who close up the liquor store every night. kind of dangerous." a day before we're both robbed at gunpoint.

if you want to be a hero, stand firm with what you know is true and don't offer strangers evil-doing help-tips.

i'm going to home alone style booby-trap my room. it'll be a two-in-one: burglar resistant and carmen-proof.