simple truth is that I didnât know what I wanted to do with my life, so I thought Iâd give the military a try. I was three years out of college, teaching high school and coaching high school football. Iâd tried a few other jobs, too, but nothing seemed to click for me. Playing war wasnât among my favorite things to do as a child. I preferred games and competitions with a quantifiable outcomeâand my mother didnât let me play with guns or take riflery at camp. (Okay, I did shoot those damn .22 rifles anyway without telling her. As a kid, it was too embarrassing not to when everyone else was doing it. I didnât understand then that it was okay to be different, or to stand for something.) I was a kid during the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, John and Bobby, and after Bobbyâs and Martin Luther Kingâs assassinations, any kind of violence made my parents crazy. Which is kind of ironic when I think about it, because I still got my ass or face cracked when I screwed up. They were shocked when I decided to go into the military.
Initially I just wanted to fly airplanes. And itâs not like flying airplanes was a lifelong dream of mine, either. I wasnât like those guys whose fathers had flown in Vietnam and grandfathers had flown in Korea or World War II. To them, completing the navyâs flight training was some sort of rite of passage (I guess itâs supposed to be this prestigious thing, but Iâm more impressed by someone who can perform brain surgery). I even knew a few whose fathers were still on active duty, admirals or generals, and who felt they had to live up to the family tradition. Meâwell, I thought it seemed like something cool to do for a while.
I made it through the navyâs aviation officer candidate school (that Officer and a Gentleman crap) and naval flight school (including carrier qualifications). One thing led to another, and there I was in Iraq, training Iraqi soldiers and trying to stay alive. So there was a trajectory of sorts, a ladder Iâd been climbing, and Iâd just kept on going until I wasnât sure I wanted to be up there anymore.
All this added up to my feeling lost when I first came back. Maybe not so much lost as disoriented. I guess you could say things seemed out of place, and at parties, even with friends, I often felt like I didnât belong. People would ask thoughtless questionsââDid you kill anyone?â âDid you get shot?â Is that what happens when people watch too much Survivor and American Idol and not enough CNN or Fox News? They think that war is a reality show?
No wonder Lava was my best palâheâd been there. He understood. Jane simply did not. A lot of returning veterans seem to wind up getting wasted 24/7. If youâre drunk or high, you probably donât notice how much you no longer fit into the world at large. But Iâm older, and I hope wiser, and instead of disappearing into a drug- or alcohol-induced haze I just became miserable to be around, constantly noting privilege and entitlement.
Janeâs and her friendsâ reality was as hard for me to comprehend as the harsh reality that our government condoned killing dogs to keep us from befriending them. I had grown used to driving by angry, worn-out Iraqis nearly every day when I was thereâold men, young kids, mothers, their heads and faces covered by the traditional hijab, whom we had to move from their homes in Fallujah into tents on the barren outskirts so we could âsafelyâ bomb the area in the name of freedom. Hearing people complain about, well, anything now struck me as absurd. In retrospect, what did I expect? They honestly had no idea what it was like. The local news didnât divulge that sort of information, which left me feeling helpless, unable to do anything except make snide comments. I could only call these Americans weak and pitiable, which of course didnât go over