This is part of a series this week about Superheroes. Check out the previous parts of the series if you haven’t already read them:

Part 0: Be a Superhero
Part 1: Superhero 1 – Batman
Part 2: Superhero 2 – Spiderman
Part 3: Superhero 3 – The Green Lantern
Part 4: Superhero 4 – Superman
Part 5: Superhero 5 – The X-Men

To round off this week’s series on Superheroes, we have a special guest today. And that guest is…..Sarah Deutsch, from the Drama Farm! She’s a really inspiring individual, doing a really great thing. But anyway, back to the topic. I think this is a great way to end of the series, with a great lesson to round it off. So, without further ado, here’s Sarah, with her favorite superhero.

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When I saw that Derrick was doing a Superhero series this week, I was
thrilled – I’m not a big comic book reader, but I love the idea of a
breed of people who go above and beyond to make the world a better
place. I’m intrigued by hero stories – everything from Superman to The Incredibles to the Heroes TV show – because I
think (or hope) that they encourage us to find the heroes in
ourselves. After all, who doesn’t want to be Superman?

I put in a request for a piece on one of my favorite superheroes of
all time, but since Derrick wasn’t acquainted with Teeny Little Super
Guy, he asked me to do a guest post instead. So, here I am!

Many of you probably don’t know or remember Teeny Little Super Guy –
he was created by Paul Fierlinger for a series of animated shorts,
which ran on Sesame Street for almost 20 years. TLSG was stop-
motion animated on the side of a plastic cup; he had a gruff voice
and a kind heart, and he spent his days helping the other kitchen
residents (egg beaters, salt shakers, etc.) with their everyday
problems. I think there’s a lot we can learn from Teeny Little Super
Guy – even us grown-ups who don’t watch Sesame Street (as much)
anymore…

Much like Batman, one thing that TLSG teaches us is that you don’t
have to have super powers to be a superhero. TLSG is just an
ordinary guy – but his power lies in connecting with others. He
listens to the people around him, he cares about them, and when
they’re in trouble, he finds ways to help. He doesn’t need spider
sense or x-ray vision – his desire to get to know those around him
leaves him open to their problems, and better able to help them find
solutions. Truly caring for others and wanting to help them is an
important trait of every superhero – helping isn’t their job; it’s a
part of who they are.

The other important thing that we can learn from TLSG is that
anyone can be a superhero, and you don’t have to solve huge
problems to do it. When we think “superhero”, most of us think of
big, flashy adventures: saving a child from a burning building;
catching someone as he’s thrown from the roof of a skyscraper;
untying the damsel in distress from the railroad tracks. We often
forget, though, that the world has smaller problems that need to be
solved as well. He may not have been flashy about it, but when TLSG
helped little Robert W. Shipshape rescue his really good hat from the middle of the
street, he sure was a hero to R.W.

The tag line to TLSG’s theme song (which you can listen to here) is “You can’t tell a hero by his size,” and it’s something that’s
stuck with me all these years. The whole world doesn’t have to know
what you did in order for you to be a superhero – all you have to do
is make a difference in one person’s life. Makes being a superhero
seem a lot more achievable, doesn’t it?

Don’t look in the sky,
Don’t look in the sea,
He’s inside of you and me…
You can’t tell a hero by his size,
He’s just a Teeny Little Super Guy…

Have you made a difference in someone’s life today?