By John

1968.  Me sloggin through college.  Didn’t know much about nothing. Career, my person, relationships.  Clueless.  Didn’t know what way was up.

Somehow, out of all this fog, did know I wasn’t gonna have my life come down to two words: Viet Nam.

Me a soldier.  You crazy?  Not just because I was out against the war demonstrating.  War, if you’re lucky you live through it.  But you see things.  You do things you don’t even want to see done.  Just today, they re-interpreted the VA rules more liberal so they can treat all the PTSD’s they pretended 50 years didn’t exist. 

I wasn’t gonna let myself get blown to bits.  Not if I could help it. I wouldn’t be there firing over peoples heads.  I’d be firin my gun at whatever moved. Indiscriminate. Who the hell knows, I might of have just stood up hopeless waiting to be hit.

Any way you slice it, that’s exactly why I wasn’t gonna let myself get put in that situation.

I wasn’t gonna get marked or mark myself by doing irrevocable, nightmare things.

Or go to jail.

Or go to Canada.  Like my friend brother selling real estate in Canada.  Terry Duncan.