'You would get arrested'

Yesterday I said to Priscilla, “I’d like to be in a room with these thieving bastards.”

She said, “You would get arrested.”

“I would be calm.”

“Really,” she said. “Like you were calm in the bowling alley last week?”

That was different.

She and I were at the bowling alley because it was John’s every other Saturday bowling day. John and a dozen others have been bowling every other every Saturday for a long time, since John’s middle school special ed teacher decided her students needed more socialization and time away from class.

John and his friends take their bowling seriously. Some do not look at scores, but they know when they bowl a good game.

Another man at the alley noticed the small Blackhorse embroidered patch on my shirt. He asked when I was in Vietnam. “Sixty-six and sixty-seven,” I said. He said he was there in 1970-71. He had been an airframe repair specialist in II Corps. I mentioned Michael had that MOS before the job was changed to a combat arms MOS. He and I talked a little more, but nothing substantial. He wanted to brag.

About the time we were leaving (Priscilla, her mother, John and I), the man said he hoped Michael had not been to Afghanistan or any place. Priscilla said, “He’s in Afghanistan now, on his second tour.”

I said, “He also has two Iraq tours.”

The man shook his head. “The Army … The suicide rate … A soldier commits suicide every day.”

I didn’t see red or anything as I often do when angry. I just pointed a finger and I said, “That’s bullshit!”

“Well, that’s what I heard.”

“It’s bullshit,” I said. “The military suicide rate is lower than the civilian rate, especially among those of the same age.” I meant the roughly 17-55 military ages.

“It’s the government,” he said.

I said, “I get tired of people who spout things before checking facts.”

“It’s the government,” he said.

Here’s what some Vietnam veterans think: “We got screwed, so every other soldier gets screwed, too.”

My three children have four Iraqs, two Afghanistans and four deployments to another desert location, and not one time did any of them say, “It’s not fair.”

Each one took the oath, just as I did, just as their grandfathers did, just as several uncles and cousins did.

Priscilla might be right, though.