a hero, poor bastard

Recovering drug addict Christopher Knafelc jumped onto the Philadelphia subway tracks Thursday to assist a man who had fallen there for reasons unknown. It was nothing fancy ... he just did it.

And now he is being held up as a hero and a Samaritan and ... well, you know the drill.

Knafelc has been clean since the time, ten days after his daughter's birth in 2010, when he held her in his arms and she smiled at him:

"That was the most powerful thing I've ever felt in my life to this day," Knafelc said. "It was better than any high from drugs."

But now, along with all the other crushing weights imposed by an attempt to remain clean, he is forced to contend with the fact that he did something right and is being called a hero.

"It did help reinforce that I'm a good person," Knafelc told The Associated Press in a Friday interview at his mother's south Philadelphia apartment. "I questioned that a lot because of my colorful past."
Still, Knafelc deflected the praise Friday by saying he was just doing the "right thing."

Sometimes I am not sure which is more burdensome and confusing -- being someone who gets things "wrong" or being someone who gets things "right."