To say that my home life growing up was anything approaching normal would be a stretch, so it came as no surprise to anyone when I announced to my folks that I was joining the Marines.
I don’t recall exactly what was going through my head when I made the decision; I do remember that I was home alone again, my parents out of town on yet another halleluiah tour of the Baptist churches in the surrounding states. At some point they had stopped insisting I keep uprooting myself to come along with them on these things, and I simply stopped going. They would be out of town three weeks out of the month, leaving me to attend school, work at the local grocery store, and sleep.
It was the deep country up against the blue-ridge mountains, so they figured there wasn’t much trouble I could get into while they were gone anyway. If I wanted to go out and make a jackass of myself while they were gone, that was my own business. Even then, we were growing farther and farther from each other; what once had been a close-knit family had broken and fractured along a thousand points of stress, and where my folks settled on religion as the balm to all of their woes, I instead turned to adventure.
Now don’t get me wrong; when I say adventure I mean stuff along the lines of getting drunk with my friends even though none of us were over fifteen, watching (and imitating) Thursday night Smackdown on the TV, and the occasional foray into the world of anonymous makeout sessions with girls at parties. Mostly I was a solitary kid who just walked the woods behind my house and fooled around with my stepdad’s pistols when no one else was there.
In my senior year I met a girl named Jessie* and we hit it off. It was a private Christian school, with a zealous policy on boy-girl interactions. Jessie and I blew past these, making out in the computer room when no one was around, passing dirty notes back and forth in the hallways, and generally doing whatever comes naturally to a couple of lava-blooded kids.
It was the dirty notes that eventually got us found out; Jessie’s parents yanked her from the school and I was given academic suspension and wasn’t allowed to attend either my own senior prom or the big class trip to New York at the end of the school year that I had been working so hard to save up money for.
Was I angry? Sure I was. I came home and told my parents what had happened at school and, for once, they were on my side. They knew that teenagers do these sort of stupid things and they didn’t understand why everyone was making such a huge deal about it when all we did was kiss a little and pass a few dirty notes.
It was the following weeks, though, that drove home just how wrong things really were.
Rather than have any sort of reaction, my folks were content to just pretend the entire thing hadn’t happened. I’d try to bring it up to talk to them about it (because hey, I was hurting a little over what had happened,) and they’d blow me off, telling me that the past was the past and it was better to just move along and know that it was forgiven by God ultimately. Now I’m a big fan of God; I’ve got all his books, but seriously? When your kid tells you he wants to talk about his emotions, don’t brush him off with a bunch of religious talk that doesn’t get him any kind of resolution.
Anyway, my folks stocked the pantry with food, made sure I had chopped enough wood to keep the stove going while they were gone, and then left town, leaving me, a dog, a rabbit, and three cats alone in the country.
Something inside of me was twisting; there was genuine pain.
And then the phone rang.
I picked it up, not recognizing the number on the display, and a pleasant voice asked for me by name. We then had a most fascinating conversation about my future and what the United Stated Marines could do for me. Without hesitating, I told the man to come and pick me up and take me to Charlotte to the big recruiting station there for a physical and some initial paperwork.
The next morning, I woke up, looked up at the shiny new Marines poster on my bedroom wall, and thought, “I’m going to be a Marine and make my parents notice me.”
I wonder how many people are six feet under in Arlington that had that same thought run through their head shortly before a bullet did?
I was entered into what’s called the Delayed Entry Program, a special program for high school seniors to have a commitment to go to boot camp after they graduate, which can be held for them up to fourteen months.
I went to school the following week and told my guidance councilor what I had done and he told me he thought it was a fine idea, but was I sure I hadn’t given due consideration to college first?
I told him I’d have to think about that, but I had never really thought about going to college; it was expensive and I didn’t think my folks would be willing to pay for it.
The next day was Tuesday. It was a normal enough morning; I got up, bathed, ate, tended to some chores around the homestead, and then drove in to school in my battered ’89 Celebrity.
After first period, I went to my study hall and had just sat down to start doodling away on a comic strip when the science teacher ran past in the hallway, panic on her face.
I had no idea what was going on, so I followed her down the hall into her classroom.
There were a lot of students and teachers gathered around a tiny off-brand TV set, and we all watched in stunned silence as smoke poured out of one of the World Trade Center buildings. As we watched, a second plane came from nowhere and slammed into the other building, a fireball engulfing multiple floors.
I felt my heart climb into my mouth with the realization of what had just happened.
Growing up in the late eighties and through the nineties, I remember stories about Russia and the Cold War, stories about people like Gaddafi, the Gulf War… I never thought in a million years that I’d personally be affected by any of that.
And now, here I was, signed up for the Marine Corps, as our nation had just been attacked from without.
For the first time, I said out loud to myself, “I’m going to die.”
It wasn’t the last time I’d say it.
*Names changed to protect the innocent
Image source: Smeagol ©
