My Unheroic Life: Second Thoughts on Odyssey

My idea of action is sitting on the Hoboken waterfront, drawing a picture and hanging it on my refrigerator door.

HOBOKEN, JULY 26, 2026. The Odyssey keeps haunting me, just as Zendaya haunts poor Matt Damon in the movie. I fear my denunciation of Nolan’s flick reflects my envy of Odysseus. He’s a great man, I’m a little man.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been binging Jack Ryan, the Amazon series. Like Odysseus, Ryan is a brainy action hero. He was scarred, traumatized, serving as a Marine in Afghanistan. Now he’s a CIA officer, protecting his country from bad guys.

Ryan doesn’t enjoy killing, he’s tender-hearted, loves kids, even a kid with a terrorist dad. Ryan only kills when he must, like when the kid’s dad is trying to infect our President with Ebola.

I’m anti-violence. That means I leave it to others, like Jack Ryan, to defend my country against violent villains. How convenient for me. Nor am I battling monsters, witches and rivals for my woman, as Odysseus does.

Wait, two women I was involved with practiced witchcraft. Does that count? As for Vicki, well, I didn’t kill her other suitors, but I had to step up my game.

But I’m no action hero, unless seeing and reviewing a play counts. Or maybe denouncing tyrants, war-mongers and AI moguls on this website. But none of the targets of my denunciations even bothers to denounce me back, so what’s the point?

Much of my life consists in rituals I perform, zombie-like, day after day: making coffee, eating yogurt/granola/banana, riding a stationary bike, staring out the window. I have more free time than usual now, because I’m on summer vacation, no teaching until September.

I spent hours yesterday drawing the cop boat above. Why? Because the boat caught my eye, and drawing absorbs me. I forget the shitshow and see only what’s right before me. I’d say drawing is a nice way to kill time, but Vicki hates that phrase.

If you asked Odysseus or Jack Ryan what they do with their free time, they’d look puzzled: Free time? What’s that? (Except Odysseus did spend seven years snacking on lotuses with Charlize Theron.)

My red date book lists a few chores, to-dos. The most urgent is “HAIRCUT.” My hair looks poofy, the back of my neck is bristly as a tarantula’s leg. I can’t see the back of my neck, but I can feel it, Vicki has dropped a hint or two.

Getting a haircut isn’t like steering between Scylla and Charybdis, but it’s not anxiety-free, either. Although the lady at Hoboken Cut & Shave is perfectly pleasant, small talk doesn’t flow. Chitchat with male barbers is even harder. Sometimes I risk rudeness and close my eyes.

As long as I’m going to Cut & Shave at First and Washington, I should walk another block to CVS and buy toilet paper. I’m on my last roll, that’s too close to the edge. Should I return the dental floss I bought for Vicki? She asked me to get “Original” CVS floss. I bought “Original Comfort,” but Vicki shook her head, not the same.

I imagine the manager at CVS giving me a look if I ask how to return dental floss. Ugh, I can’t deal with that. I’ll just keep this Original Comfort floss, even though I have several Oral-Bs stockpiled.

I should stop at Whole Foods, too, pick up something for dinner. Maybe a roast chicken and tomato/mozzarella/basil. Wait, is basil one of the leafy things sickening people around the country? I should google that.

See? I face perils, too.

Another to-do, “BUY TV,” has been in my red book for months. My 12-year-old TV popped a pixel or whatever last winter, a bright line runs down the left side of the screen. Annoying. Google says this flaw is too complicated to fix. Time to get a new TV.

That means going to Best Buy and dealing with salesmen who leer like sharks at oldsters like me. After a salesman foists a new TV on me, I need to hire the Geek Squad to install it and take the old TV away. I don’t trust myself to get the new TV to work, and I can’t live without TV.

But I dread dealing with Best Buy, so I keep putting off this chore. Jack Ryan would surely fix his own TV. Odysseus too, after you showed him a video tutorial that explains what a TV is. Not that those guys would ever lie on a couch (re)watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The TV was the first thing I bought when I moved to Hoboken after my divorce. Money was tight, but I wanted to treat myself to something nice, so I splurged on a 60-inch Samsung flat-screen high-definition plasma TV. I’d never owned a TV half that big before. It’s the best purchase I’ve ever made.

I spent a week in my otherwise empty new apartment lying in a sleeping bag watching movies on CDs. Verizon hadn’t hooked me up yet, so I couldn’t get Netflix. Eventually the woman I was seeing (one of the witches) took me to Ikea to get a bed, couch, chairs, lamps and whatnot. Talk about traumatic.

The old Samsung has given me lots of pleasure, but it’s time for it to go. Out with the old, in with the new. One day it will be my time to go. That’s something I have in common with Jack Ryan and Odysseus.

I just thought of something else to do: write a column on my un-heroic life. This is a fine literary tradition. Ulysses, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock come to mind.

So does The Myth of Sisyphus. Yeah, men dully do their duty, day after day, then die. What’s the point? Well, the point, obviously, is having fun, like watching Jack Ryan with Vicki as we eat grilled asparagus and salmon. Oh, and while you’re having fun, try not to be a dick. Avoid killing, especially kids.

Sisyphus and Prufrock are depressing. I’ll shoot for jocular with hints of rage and despair.

Further Reading:

Check out my list of “Cross-Check” columns here.