Five Minutes

 

Can't remember the name of the movie where the macho hero,

donning a dirty wife-beater tank top that artfully

showcases his rippling biceps and pecs,

purposefully and knowledgeably loads a fresh cartridge

into a very large gun and says to the reluctant heroine,

“Five minutes.”

She has five minutes to freak out about the fact

that she has lost everything she had ever known and loved,

and that the fate of all the people on Earth

now lay in her perfectly manicured hands.

“I can't do this,” she insists, crying and shaking uncontrollably.

“Somebody else has to!”

“There is no one else,” the hero responds.

He looks sympathetically into her tear-filled eyes for a sexually charged moment,

then brusquely tells her that she's got five minutes to cry.

Then she has to save the world.

 

Maybe it was 10 seconds.

Maybe I have the whole scenario wrong.

Maybe I've just made all this up?

 

Anyhow, the point is that aliens are still running rampant through the streets,

and the reluctant heroine, awkward with an automatic rifle strapped to her back,

takes her five minutes and goes on, though continuously attempting to justify

why she can't go on; pleading that all her weaknesses and faults should have

disqualified her from this duty, this responsibility to the world --

And in a brief lull in the action, as they hide behind a

conveniently placed concrete pillar, safe from the marauding invaders,

the well-muscled hero explains how all of her foibles, her eccentricities,

her idiosyncrasies make her uniquely qualified for the task at hand.

Then, of course, they kiss, passionately, until they are interrupted

by a laser blast shattering their concrete sanctuary.

 

So my five minutes is up, and my hero may not be from a Bowflex commercial,

(and is heavily medicated), but he's built my faults into a pedestal

upon which I can survey the battlefield.

While the tears shed in a mere five minutes seem meager

and there are no aliens attacking, it's time to strap my fully loaded

heart back on my sleeve and go back to work saving the world.