Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Goals
First some background. I am of an age to remember the Vietnam war as something that was talked about on the evening news (eg, the daily bodycount reports stick in my mind) and as a place where the older brothers and cousins of my friends and I were being sent. I was in early elementary school when the war first intruded on my mind. My Dad was in the Navy at the time and we lived in San Diego. San Diego back then was a Navy town. In my neighborhood, my Dad was in the Navy, the dad next door was in the Navy. The dad directly across the street had been in Navy for a few years after college. The dad next door to them had been in the Navy during Korea. And that's just 4 houses on my street. I knew that Americans had been fighting in Vietnam for years and years, that it wasn't going well, and as far as I knew everyone ended up in the military.
It must have been 1969 or 1970 (so I was six or seven, rougly the age that YW is right now), I was playing in the dirt in the side yard. I had built a small fort for my plastic soldiers and was besieging the fortress by throwing small dirt clods and gravel at the little guys. Out of no where the thought hit me that when I turned 18, got drafted and was sent to Vietnam, I hoped I would be brave before I was killed. This somewhat bleak thought didn't really interfere with my play. It was my future and I was hoping for the best.
Now I find myself thinking that YW and YA are really facing that conundrum based on the war that shitbird Bush launched.
Update: Edited to flow better because I got my first trackback with this post. Thanks, Rook!
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