ass if you let down your guard and an ignorant world outside that thinks you're somehow damaged, dirty or immoral, and still manage to get through the day without breaking down or climbing up on the roof with an automatic weapon and thinning out the neighborhood.

Ryan White was a scrappy little 13-year-old kid who banged a dent in the universe by refusing to accept AIDS's limitations and educated millions of teens about HIV; my buddy Duane Puryear had a wicked sense of very un-PC black humor -- he called the AIDS ward

"Sick Fags Over Texas" when he was hospitalized in Dallas -- but he weaseled his way into reluctant educators' hearts and made them listen; 78-year-old Linda Colby told a 7th grade class last week that even grandmothers can get AIDS and that women in Africa are dying at an alarming pace...you should have seen the rapt faces and heard the questions, unflinchingly answered.

Heroes we got out the wazoo. We just need to seek them out, follow their examples, be good to each other and work together.

I try to be my own hero. That may sound flippant, but 15 years ago when I was really trying to grasp a direction for my life, a friend wise beyond his years reminded me that no one is perfect, that heroes fall and white knights on horseback are rare. Instead, he said, I should identify those qualities I found heroic and good and valuable in anyone I admired, and cultivate them in myself. "You won't always succeed," he said, "but you'll be better for trying. Losers sit and wish. Heroes try. Be your own hero."

It ends up, though, that most of the admirable qualities I want to have I saw in my father. He was the smartest man I've ever known and understood better than most the difference between education (of

which he had little) and knowledge (of which he had much). He was incredibly gregarious, could always find something to talk about -- at length -- with absolutely anyone and in conversation with him, you always felt as though you were the absolute center of his universe right then. Dad had a story about everyone, and I never met anyone who knew him who didn't have five or ten about him.

There's a quote by Mark Twain, something along the lines of "You should endeavor to live your life such that when you die, even the undertaker will be sorry." The procession of cars at my dad's funeral stretched out four miles and, yes, the usually stoic funeral director cried. I should be so lucky.