I'm pretty sure a perfect world doesn't exist except in the minds of poets.. it's with fortune that everyone has a little poet in the corner of their brain.. Some let them speak, others force them to quietly observe.. Some, I'm thinking, don't even know they are there.

I'm here to tell you this- and you can believe this or not: Some of those guys die over there.. Another good portion die over there and come back to exist for another fifty years.. The very fortunate leave the personality (call it an alter) in the sand box and that is where it remains. This, in my humblest opinion, creates quite a paradigm.. I mean, would you trust your children around someone who is capable of very foul things and who is also capable of concealing that trait to the point you would never believe it? THIS, isn't me asking you.. This is instead the question many of these guys ask themselves.. Rhonda, you say you're old- I reckon I trust that.. In your experience do you find that reckoning with yourself more difficult than reckoning others actions?

Honestly, I'm not part of the discussion.. I missed almost all of the nasty.. I'm searching, I think, for a way to relate..

About the time I joined this board I knew a team in Marjah, and they were hit. One dude died and the other two took some pretty substantial ouchies.. One lost a testicle- and now calls himself 'half satchel' on the radio.. He convalesced, and went straight back to put his papers in for return.. 'They' wouldn't let him, so he plays a different angle and moved to another unit filling a billet that outranked him (it's a good way to get a promotion)- that unit is deploying soon.. He tricked them in other words (but 'they' allowed themselves to be tricked understand).. and the beat goes on... So Hotel-Sierra gets to go back to the place where folks don't look at him funny, but the place that is jacking him up... It's a dang mess I'm telling ya.. HS is the grand old age of 26, and has three purple hearts and a bronze star with combat fixture... When he returned he bought a Harley, and asked his mothers permission to ride it from Mizzou back here.. How jacked up is that? When he called and told me he was coming back off of leave and said he was awaiting his mothers approval to ride I thought to myself "man, that is jacked up on SO many different levels I don't even know where to start"... I DID know where to end though- I concluded that HS will be okay.. He has built a barrier between here and there..

I reckon all this sounds as if I'm complaining, or soliciting some variant of sympathy- but I can assure you guys I am not... Maybe I'm leaving another chapter behind and just trying to file it in a way to cross-reference.. Make heads or tails with what is happening so to speak.. I'm sure everyone has this type of milestone in their life that involves a myriad of situations.  I'm thinking I simply want to understand for me, but mostly for them.. I want it all to mean something really big and profound.. I fear it doesn't..