My experience in the military wasn't a pleasant one. When I got out, I had trouble adjusting, and the people who smiled and told me I was a hero were ironically as much a part of the problem as the people who called me a murderer. Because when it really came down to it, they didn't know anything about me, and didn't really want to know.
They assumed. And instead of making me feel loved - or hated - it made me feel worthless. Like my patriotism and my sacrifice had been cast off and replaced with a pastiche ideal. Something so foreign to me, I couldn't even recognize it.
Loving a soldier because they served is like loving a chef because of his killer pork roast. It's nice, but it doesn't count for much.
This story isn't about me asking for sympathy. This is me trying to express some of the most central pains of my life.
*
I Want You
“The country needs us, Mom.”
“Mmhmm.”
“California might be captured. And if they get California,
Florida’s next.”
“What would be after Florida?”
“Chicago.” He looked up, “This is serious.”
“And how many soldiers do you figure you’d need?”
He tucked his chin to his chest and said through a smile,
“Five bags.”
“Five?!”
He giggled.
“Well, bad news for the troops, Tommy. The country can’t afford that many
reinforcements.”
“Really Mom, just one would help.”
“Hrm. We’ll see.”
*
He opened the bag with a pair of blunted scissors from his backpack. Each soldier was carefully disentangled from his comrades and inspected. A few were already damaged. Warped, dwindled, or malformed, and he placed them carefully aside.
A bucket in
the closet was red, white, and blue. A
star-spangled elder with a face stern and inviting stared off the side,
pointing a finger that spoke volumes of duty, patriotism, and need. The aged patriot ignored the boy’s inventory,
preferring to stare rigidly at the crossbow and foam bolts beside him.
Tommy
finished his pageant and scooped up the castoffs. Carrying them solemnly to the
closet, he nudged the door further open with his foot and dumped them in the
bucket. He offered an unbalanced salute, and rushed back to his war.
Mouthed
explosions and gunfire, heavy footsteps from a light body, shouted orders and
Yes, Sir’s. Tommy marshaled his armies,
devastating each side with imaginary mortar strikes, napalm, mines, and
missiles. One was stepped on. Thirteen
were crushed beneath a dictionary-shaped bunker buster. One was lost when an explosion scattered them
across the room.
The list of
casualties was substantial. And except
for the one lost, Tommy extracted them all from the battlefield. And before he went down for dinner he gave himself one last duty.
He put them gently to rest behind the half-closed closet
door.
*
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