That Time of Year

Ah, football.

It had been entirely too long since I played football, so I went out with the guys and played for a few hours.

The guys decided that we would forgo the two-hand touch and go crazy with a friendly game of full-contact, tackle football. I had not played in almost a year, but I figured, hey, I'm in good shape, I'm strong, I can run decently fast, I can handle it cold turkey.

I was wrong.

I ache.

Short-term memory is a bitch. I love to play football, but after long lapses in playing, I forget how taxing it is to run at full speed for several seconds at a time, constantly shifting side-to-side, constantly colliding with guys who range from less than your size or much, much larger--only to finish the play, pick yourself up off the ground, and repeat.

Now, not to sound too much like some meathead, but it is definitely . . . fun to hit somebody--I mean, really lay into them. It is even more fun to do that whilst carrying the ball, lowering your shoulder and sending the would-be tackler hurtling through the air as you continue to scamper down the sidelines.

Getting hit by someone else, however, is not always so fun. Sure, sometimes it really wakes you up and gets you going when someone knocks you on your ass. But when people are charging at you at full speed and trying to make a tackle, the end result ain't always so pretty. I took an elbow or two, got tackled by the head (that one tickled . . .), knocked heads with some other dude, saw some other guy take a shoulder to the groin.

And yet, we all kept coming back for more. What the hell is wrong with us? Guys, that is.

I don't know, but one thing I do know for sure:

Can't wait to do it again next week.

And Knowing is Half the Battle

So I'm hanging out with South tonight, commiserating about the fairer sex--basically just minding my own, ya know.

Anyway, we get to talking on his porch/landing/deck, and one of his roommate's friends drops by to say "Howdy." Apparently, he is in the Marine Corps, and he is preparing to go to Iraq in about a month. He is young--probably 20, 22 tops. I was utterly mesmerized as he carried on about life "over there." He knows a bunch of guys who are in combat, and they tell him stories about their experiences.

It's amazing, really. Every story he tells is about some "crazy fucker" over in Iraq (he referred to almost every US soldier as a "crazy fucker"). He talks about the inherent dangers (car bombs came up frequently), but every story involved his comrades getting injured and then "wasting" people (This is the term he used the whole night: "wasting.").

"Oh, my boy Jimmy went into some bombed out house in [some Iraqi city that I can't name, let alone spell]. This guy on the roof dropped a grenade down in the house," he'd say, " and Jimmy threw [soldier #2] into the corner. He got 40 pieces of shrapnel in his back, then hauled around and wasted that bastard."

"Todd was in a Hummer manning the guns. They hit a bump and he was knocked out of the truck. They got an hour down the road before they realized the problem and went back for him. He only had a pistol and a knife on him. Some dog came nearby and was making noise. That crazy fucker had to slit its throat so it wouldn't draw attention."

[Side bar: soldierboy went into some detail about killing animals in Iraq. Apparently, dogs, cats, and camels are big problems over there. He said that the cats eat on the dead people, so they "waste" them. The dogs chase the cars/tanks and make noise, so they "waste" them. And I guess that the camels lay around all day in the road, blocking the vehicles. They also make some noise when you get close to them. So they "waste" them, and as soldierboy said "they don't make noise no more."]

The he got into some particularly disturbing details. He said that during the frequent attacks there, they have some sort of alarm or something that goes off. After that point, the Marines give everyone "about 5 minutes" to clear the road. After that, "everyone is fair game." Soldierboy went on to talk about some other friend who saw a line of people standing around after the "warning time." He proceeded to "[waste] them, one right after the other." Another soldier noticed that some guy "kept staring at him funny" for several minutes (I do not recall if this was after the "warning."). So he "wasted" him too.

Another thing that struck me was soldierboy's obsession with the number of "kills" that everyone had. He was bragging about his friends and how "Joey has 15 kills" and "Billy has 30--that crazy fucker" and so forth.

After this discussion, it really just felt like he and all of the other soldiers were treating war like they were playing a shoot-em-up game of Halo. Part of me wondered if this was some sort of necessary coping mechanism for these young soldiers--kind of removing themselves from the situation to make it bearable. But the way he talked about it . . . he was anxious, excited even. He longed to be there to "waste" some guys to get his kill number up to snuff so he too could be a "crazy fucker."

The most lasting thought I had afterwards was "These are the people who are defending our country?" It reminded me of Fahrenheit 9/11, where there is footage of an interviewed young soldier, where he quotes the song "Fire, Water, Burn" ("The roof is on fire; we don't need no water let the mother fucker burn. Burn mother fucker. Burn.")

Maybe you need some sort of edge like this to be able to handle war, but it was very disturbing. It just seemed like they lost any sort of decency and humanity. Of course, I say that without knowing any of the horrors and stresses and realities of being in active combat. I guess I am not enough of a "crazy fucker" to understand it.

All I know is that I really wanted to either throw up on or punch soldierboy for his longing gazes whilst expressing his jealousy that he wasn't there yet to "waste those Arabs," as he put it.

Another Day, Another Dollar

Happy Birthday to Me.

On this day in 1981, at 5:35pm, a 7 lb., 8 oz. baby boy came into the world.

And isn't your life so much the richer for it?

Good Night, Betty Jean

I don’t know where to begin.

My grandmother died today. She had a massive heart attack last night, followed by 3 or 4 smaller ones today.

I've never had to deal much with death in the past, which is a mixed blessing, I suppose. I've only had one person die who was somewhat close to me, and that was years ago. I can’t quite place where my emotions lie. I feel strange. Numb.

To be fair, over the past 6 years (since the day of my High School prom, to be exact), I have had almost no contact with her. This is my mother’s mom, and we had a bit of a falling out over the questionable choices she continued to make. Actually, I haven’t had contact in a while with most of my mother’s side of the family, for various reasons.

That being said, it still hit me—much harder than I thought it would. I thought that I had become emotionally immune to her, but those feelings changed. Sitting in a hospital room, spending all day witnessing someone slowly die in front of my eyes; seeing someone I used to love so much gasp and struggle for hours for each and every strained, painful, choked breath; watching aunts and uncles and cousins, that I hadn’t seen in years, break down over and over and over again . . . it affected me.

I tried to keep my composure, tried to be strong for my mother—who had asked me to come and be by her side. I didn’t like to see her cry.

I couldn’t help but think about the good times, such as they were. For whatever reason, my mind kept turning to the countless times my brother, my cousin, and I would stay the night at her house when we were much younger. Like clockwork, my grandmother would make us a plate of fudge. I remember that no one ever served us fudge quite like she did. She would get out a giant serving plate (I think that is what you call it—it was a huge plate that had a little bit of depth to it) and pour the fudge onto it. I just remember how cool I thought it was that we would have this fudge of varying sizes and thicknesses, based on where it was on the plate. We would fight over who would get the thicker middle pieces and who would get stuck with the wimpy outer "crust." Inevitably, it would not matter, as the entire plate would be devoured by the end of the night, with each child full beyond their heart’s content.

Not that that was a particularly profound memory, but, my God, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I was at the hospital for roughly 6 or 7 hours, watching her struggle with life, with death. She was in and out of consciousness, riding wave after wave of morphine. Oddly enough, she would often babble about playing cards—what moves she would make, whether or not she would win, whether or not she was cheating . . .

It looked like things may drag on, so I left the hospital just before 6pm. I got the call from my mother at 7:40. I was driving at the time. I told my mother that I was sorry, and that I would be there if she needed me. I slowly stared off in the distance and told my wife the news.

Three tears formed in my eyes—one in the left, two in the right.
And they slowly rolled down my cheeks.