Wednesday's Digressions

• I try to raise my children to thoughtful and compassionate without being wimps. You would be very unlikely to hear them bellyache about physical effort regardless of environment. Hot? Drink water. Cold? Wear a good hat, gloves , socks and boots.



• Zachary is 4 and it's nothing for us to walk 2-4 miles just to do it when I'm up to it.. He will routinely when we walk out and he realises we're headed for the car say,"Uh! Can we just walk to the store instead of drive?"



• He's riding circles around me (literally) in the house on his bike.



• He's learned an astonishing variety of curse words from somewhere. I'm trying to get him away from that without entrenching it by making too big of a deal of it.



• Boat: a large fiberglass hole in the water into which you throw money.



• I'm unsure if a single friendship could be rekindled from interacting with old classmates at a reunion or whatever, but I'm oddly thinking it would be nice to see a lot of them.



• A funny thing in that regard: I still have a mimeographed copy of my first grade class roll. There is only a name or two I don't recognise and nearly every one else on there made it all the way through with the group to high school.



• Combat vehicle graveyard at my base in Iraq. My first thoughts: One of the Bradleys filmed was destroyed by a massive IED on a route my unit patrolled regularly. Six men were killed. One of the M1 tanks had a perfect, bloody hand print inside the commanders hatch. I could not help, but place my hand over that print and imagine that poor mans pain and hope and pray he lived. This was a parking area for combat vehicles which were to be canned (cannibalized) or rebuilt- the park for other destroyed vehicles had close to 100 HUMVEES, trucks, trailers etc. in it. Memories are mine- video shot by someone else.