Regardless of who we are as men, there is a little bit of Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor in all of us guys. Yes, this includes the intellectuals, the geeks, nerds and dweebs too. I learned a long time ago that men like to fix things. Some of us are better at it than others, but there is a strange sense of pride and accomplishment that goes with stretching the edges of your personal envelope and fixing something you have never worked on before. Now, I am not talking about changing the oil in our cars or some other mundane mechanical maintenance. I am talking about really getting in there and fixing something that is broke, busted and otherwise, not working.
Previously, I figured out that changing disk brakes on a modern, post 2000, car or SUV is not, contrary to what repair shops would have you believe, rocket science. There are no engineering degrees required and contrary to the aforementioned repair shops, once you have the problem figured out, it ain't that hard. When you hear the brakes making noise, you are down to a chatter strip that is designed to tell you that you have 10% or less of brake pad left. Time to replace the brake pads...duh!! And...again contrary to popular belief, you do not have to have the disks turned, or ground down smooth every time. Trust me, the brake pads will wear in just fine after in a few hundred miles. So, it is a matter of taking the old parts out, reversing the procedure and putting the new parts in. How much does it cost to put in new brake pads? I did it for less than $100.00 for my front wheels and used really good, top of the line, pads. I probably could have done it for less than $60.00 if I used the cheap stuff.
My most recent endeavor was at home repair and was a much more risky venture. My air conditioning crapped out and left me with 85 degree temperatures inside. This is wholly unacceptable! I checked out the system and quickly determined that the motor that turns the outside (condenser) fan was not turning. This, in turn, does not allow the coolant to be cooled in the coils and thus, you are just recycling heated coolant, which accomplishes very little, obviously. I found the fan motor to be very hot to the touch, not something good for an electric motor. So, being a fairly bright guy, I shut the power off to the unit. I hear they can be very pretty when they burn, but my house being very close and being made of wood, made it inadviseable to test this observation.
Now the first thing you do is take pictures of everything with your trusty color, digital camera. I took pictures of the label on the outside of the fan unit and found the serial number and model number of the unit. It is so much easier to look at the picture than try to write it all down and read your handwriting later. I then went online and started Googling numbers and parts, like the model and serial number of the unit and term "motor". Poof...I came up with all sorts of motors, sources and prices. Please note that I was rudely awakened to find my air conditioner was installed in 1991, but knowing that I could get the parts, I went back outside and started taking out screws and things to get the bad motor out. Once I got that done, I took pictures of the motor label, brown burn marks and all (I told you they get really hot), and had a serial number, model number and some specifications for the motor. Oh, and to get the motor out, I had to take a panel off the side of the condensing unit and found a capacitor that looked kinda ugly.
[Caution: Some Geek Speak Follows] Okay, I did not know exactly what it (a capacitor) was when I took the panel off, but it was rusted, corroded and leaking some sort of sticky fluid. It also looked like it had been blown up too big, as indicated by the bulging top, bottom and sides. I astutely figured it probably needed to be replaced, and I was right I later found out. A capacitor looks like a small can with wires attached to tab-like terminals sticking out of the top of the can. It is a little smaller than a beer or soda can. They come in round and oval shapes. I managed to figure this out looking at a multitude of pictures on the Internet. Just FYI, a capacitor kinda stores electrical energy so when the motor and compressor need to start, there is stored "juice" to allow them both to start up quickly without overloading the circuit breaker. It's kind of a high-pressure, "jolt" battery that gives a quick surge of electricity. Without a capacitor, the motor and compressor would "pop" the breaker every time. They come in different capacities, some esoteric measurement called a "micro farad" is used to measure this capacity, but I digress. Needless to say, I learned far more about capacitors than I wanted to know, but asking questions does get you information.
Again, make sure you take pictures of everything, this allows you to put all the right colored wires back where they need to be when you get new parts. Take pictures of the labels and markings on everything so you have the makes and models and all sorts of good information. Then you can start looking online for the parts. Do not be satisfied with your first go-round on parts; shop and compare. You will save money!! I called an A/C repair place that referred me to a wholesale distributor and got $200.00 worth of parts for $104.00. The Internet was not cheaper this time.
I took my new parts home, compared them to the old parts, and they looked pretty close. The motor was identical, the capacitor was a newer type, but it had all the same numbers, so I was fairly sure it would work. Then, using my pictures, I put all the right-colored wires on the correct terminals on all the electrical stuff. Then I checked it again to make sure I had not screwed up. There is nothing worse than throwing a switch, hearing a pffffzzzt and seeing smoke from your new motor and capacitor....an expensive mistake. Just to make sure, I checked it a third time, this time in reverse order, to make triple certain it was wired right. Then the moment of truth
I set the thermostat inside to make sure the A/C would start and threw the breaker. I heard the inside A/C come on, but could not hear the outside unit. I went outside and was delighted to find it humming away, more quietly than before, I might add. Nothing rattling, nor rockin' and rollin'. My house began to cool almost immediately and within two hours, it was a lovely 78 degrees.
So, for three hours of my time and $100.00 in parts, I learned something about how to fix an air conditioner and saved myself the service call and mark-up which would have been about $450.00. I also got to experience that feeling of accomplishment that allows me to grunt like a caveman, a la Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor...PRICELESS!!!!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Why Do Beautiful Women Date Ugly Men?
This is a question some people actually ponder all their lives. Mostly, its people who are into vanity, thinking the stunning girl must be out of her mind, but the truth remains a mystery to the small minded of this world. All the handsome guys want the girl, all the average girls look down on her, but perhaps that ugly guy could teach you a thing or two. I did some thinking and with some study I worked it out. It is true love and it's a good yarn to read.
I don't know how you think or how you behave but let me tell you how I discover the things I want to know.
If I want to know something, the first thing I do is ask someone who should know the answer to my question. I grew up asking heaps of questions. I still ask them of learned people and I search out things myself. When I asked my mother a question I had about the Bible once, I stumped her and I learned there is always a higher authority. Sometimes I asked my mother or father a question, went to books written on the subject of my question and still come up short. I am very deep sometimes and sometimes I want the deep answer. Sometimes I don't ask people a question, I simply think about it for a long time. The question of why that stunning girl dates that ugly guy I worked out by myself and by chatting with some very pretty women.
There are three reasons people give me when I ask them, why pretty women date ugly guys. Two of them I will mention. Then, after I mention them I will go on to the third, deeper and more loving reason that I discovered.
People say pretty women date ugly guys because:
1. The guy has got something she really desires in life. Most often, this is money and possessions and the capacity for her to live her life with no worry about money. This can even be something noble, he is a respected film producer and she is a talented actress, for example.
2. Or, the guy can supply her with all the drugs she wants to take to be out of her mind and have a good time in her youth.
I often looked at Mick Jagger and wondered, was it just 1 and 2 that the pretty girls that have been in his life fell for? I think it may be one and two but possibly the third that I will share.
So why else does a pretty lass fall in love with an ugly guy?
The little baby girl is complimented on her really pretty features from the time she is born. A really cute baby gets a mother plenty of compliments and most of them are by women to mom. Sure, the father may be complimented too, but the prettiness of a little girl seems to be credited to her pretty mother, more often than not.
If the mother is into her pretty little daughter a lot, the mother might even go as far as to enter her child in baby beauty contests. If the little girl smiles in her picture and is really judged by the judges of prettiness as the best child, the mother will have a ribbon or a framed picture of that to show her daughter when she is old enough. In our modern times even video of the event, al la JonBenet Ramsey, a video that we have all seen as nauseum.
When I was a growing teenager, I used to see a really pretty girl and thought it was a compliment to tell them that they were really pretty and then ask them if they had ever considered being a model. I did this a lot as I was mixed up sort of guy, who didn't get a lot of love in his life. Talking to pretty girls and keeping them in conversation made me feel good, but one thing I noticed after using the line many times was that the pretty girls didn't really think they had been complimented. In fact, on many occasions, they cut me short and made it clear that my line of speech was not at all appreciated.
Why was this so? I had to ask myself. Why would a stunning girl get offended by a boy or a man telling her she was stunning?
Do you know the one thing that a really pretty girl most often misses out on? Genuine love and appreciation for the talents she has inside her and for her heart and her secret desires to impact the world in which she lives. People seem to see her only skin deep and some stunning young girls in this world are told to be quiet when they try to prove that they are also very intelligent.
I have to laugh; the other day I saw a very attractive attorney at the courtouse. I pointed her out to another man that was walking next to me and he agreed this beautiful, intelligent woman was in another class. He joked that he wished he could get her business card and use her for his law work. He had reduced an obviously accomplished and educated woman to the sum of her bodily parts. I don’t think he will ever realize that he was missing out on the majority of what made her attractive, at least to me. I myself must acknowledge taht it was her beauty that attracted my attention.
It's a sad truth that most men prefer blondes and many brunettes dye their hair blonde to cater to this bias in men, yet this self same evil world we live in comes out with a hundred and one dumb blonde jokes. Do you know what we are saying as we share these dumb blonde jokes and laugh in the presence of a blonde who can hear it? We are saying, dress up for me, look pretty, be a lady in public and a sex object behind closed doors, but shut your mouth because we don't want to hear anything you say! The only thing a stunning blonde or brunette can never be sure of is this; they can never be sure men love them for who they are inside or for what they look like on the outside. This is a sad way to live.
Yet along comes an ugly guy and the one thing that he can be very confident of is that his friends love him for who he is and not what he looks like. No one hangs around an ugly guy with no money and no drugs because of fringe benefits. Therefore, if you meet an ugly guy that has heaps of friends, you have met one guy that has met this hypocritical and shallow educated world we live in head on, and triumphed.
These ugly guys that conquered the world have magnetism, because there is nothing that attracts like skin and outer beauty that this sick world considers to be worth more than gold. Their beauty is an inner beauty that cannot be bought, traded or copied. An ugly guy like this has a lot of real life questions he can answer for you and if you are lacking in love for yourself in areas of your life, most often he will have the key.
Let me say here, that I rarely meet people that I could ever call ugly, as I am connected to hearts and not the outer appearance in people.
We all like to say that it's not the looks of a person that counts, it's what's inside; the old “you can’t judge a book by its cover” theory. However, every advertisement selling us things has handsome people selling them and we spend a fortune trying to look good and a lot less money trying to become better people on the inside.
So here comes the true love
One day a truly stunningly beautiful girl meets an ugly guy at work. Let's just say he is studying at a university or some college and she is studying to become a psychologist.
He is washing dishes and busy working for $8.50 an hour and she is a waitress who keeps on adding dirty dishes to his bench with no room on it for anything else. The whole floor is full of pots and he is going flat out. She gets upset with some of her customers sometimes, but he is always there with understanding and will even stop washing to console her and say:
"People want their own way in life and sometimes the meal and the way you serve them is not to their liking. Most times they are just taking something out on you because they have had a bad day and can find fault in something they didn't like in you or the food. They are simply dumping on you. Don't worry about it," he smiles. "You dump dishes down on me all the time and even when I am busy I have the time to give you a hug and chat, and do you see me complaining? No. That's because this is my job here to wash dirty dishes and make un-appreciated waitresses feel better." Once again he is smiling and he turns back to the dishes. The waitress walks out smiling feeling happier, and happy he is such a giving and positive workmate.
When they have a beer together after the restaurant is closed and after he has asked her about all her dreams and desires in life, and given her his input and his time, she may ask him what he wants to do in his life. He is a simple man. He simply wants to change people's hearts. His simplicity, honesty and creativity are three things that make this woman want to know him more and she is fascinated with how he says that he wants to do for people what she will be doing in therapy. Before long she is standing in front of him, packed with emotion, crying and within a month this woman and her dishwasher are in love, for all the right reasons. She does not see him as ugly and he does not look at her outer shell, and that's why that stunning girl dates that ugly guy.
Postscript.
This was one of the first things I wrote in February, 2010, but I was not sure that this would be something people would read; first, because it was long and second because of the topic. In fact, in my local shopping mall I struck up conversations with four women I did not know, an act of bravery in itself, and asked them if they saw the headline in a magazine, would they pick up the magazine and read it. The girls said yes and then told me I could not leave until I had let them read it.
I invite you to browse through my postings and see if another headline grabs you.
I don't know how you think or how you behave but let me tell you how I discover the things I want to know.
If I want to know something, the first thing I do is ask someone who should know the answer to my question. I grew up asking heaps of questions. I still ask them of learned people and I search out things myself. When I asked my mother a question I had about the Bible once, I stumped her and I learned there is always a higher authority. Sometimes I asked my mother or father a question, went to books written on the subject of my question and still come up short. I am very deep sometimes and sometimes I want the deep answer. Sometimes I don't ask people a question, I simply think about it for a long time. The question of why that stunning girl dates that ugly guy I worked out by myself and by chatting with some very pretty women.
There are three reasons people give me when I ask them, why pretty women date ugly guys. Two of them I will mention. Then, after I mention them I will go on to the third, deeper and more loving reason that I discovered.
People say pretty women date ugly guys because:
1. The guy has got something she really desires in life. Most often, this is money and possessions and the capacity for her to live her life with no worry about money. This can even be something noble, he is a respected film producer and she is a talented actress, for example.
2. Or, the guy can supply her with all the drugs she wants to take to be out of her mind and have a good time in her youth.
I often looked at Mick Jagger and wondered, was it just 1 and 2 that the pretty girls that have been in his life fell for? I think it may be one and two but possibly the third that I will share.
So why else does a pretty lass fall in love with an ugly guy?
The little baby girl is complimented on her really pretty features from the time she is born. A really cute baby gets a mother plenty of compliments and most of them are by women to mom. Sure, the father may be complimented too, but the prettiness of a little girl seems to be credited to her pretty mother, more often than not.
If the mother is into her pretty little daughter a lot, the mother might even go as far as to enter her child in baby beauty contests. If the little girl smiles in her picture and is really judged by the judges of prettiness as the best child, the mother will have a ribbon or a framed picture of that to show her daughter when she is old enough. In our modern times even video of the event, al la JonBenet Ramsey, a video that we have all seen as nauseum.
When I was a growing teenager, I used to see a really pretty girl and thought it was a compliment to tell them that they were really pretty and then ask them if they had ever considered being a model. I did this a lot as I was mixed up sort of guy, who didn't get a lot of love in his life. Talking to pretty girls and keeping them in conversation made me feel good, but one thing I noticed after using the line many times was that the pretty girls didn't really think they had been complimented. In fact, on many occasions, they cut me short and made it clear that my line of speech was not at all appreciated.
Why was this so? I had to ask myself. Why would a stunning girl get offended by a boy or a man telling her she was stunning?
Do you know the one thing that a really pretty girl most often misses out on? Genuine love and appreciation for the talents she has inside her and for her heart and her secret desires to impact the world in which she lives. People seem to see her only skin deep and some stunning young girls in this world are told to be quiet when they try to prove that they are also very intelligent.
I have to laugh; the other day I saw a very attractive attorney at the courtouse. I pointed her out to another man that was walking next to me and he agreed this beautiful, intelligent woman was in another class. He joked that he wished he could get her business card and use her for his law work. He had reduced an obviously accomplished and educated woman to the sum of her bodily parts. I don’t think he will ever realize that he was missing out on the majority of what made her attractive, at least to me. I myself must acknowledge taht it was her beauty that attracted my attention.
It's a sad truth that most men prefer blondes and many brunettes dye their hair blonde to cater to this bias in men, yet this self same evil world we live in comes out with a hundred and one dumb blonde jokes. Do you know what we are saying as we share these dumb blonde jokes and laugh in the presence of a blonde who can hear it? We are saying, dress up for me, look pretty, be a lady in public and a sex object behind closed doors, but shut your mouth because we don't want to hear anything you say! The only thing a stunning blonde or brunette can never be sure of is this; they can never be sure men love them for who they are inside or for what they look like on the outside. This is a sad way to live.
Yet along comes an ugly guy and the one thing that he can be very confident of is that his friends love him for who he is and not what he looks like. No one hangs around an ugly guy with no money and no drugs because of fringe benefits. Therefore, if you meet an ugly guy that has heaps of friends, you have met one guy that has met this hypocritical and shallow educated world we live in head on, and triumphed.
These ugly guys that conquered the world have magnetism, because there is nothing that attracts like skin and outer beauty that this sick world considers to be worth more than gold. Their beauty is an inner beauty that cannot be bought, traded or copied. An ugly guy like this has a lot of real life questions he can answer for you and if you are lacking in love for yourself in areas of your life, most often he will have the key.
Let me say here, that I rarely meet people that I could ever call ugly, as I am connected to hearts and not the outer appearance in people.
We all like to say that it's not the looks of a person that counts, it's what's inside; the old “you can’t judge a book by its cover” theory. However, every advertisement selling us things has handsome people selling them and we spend a fortune trying to look good and a lot less money trying to become better people on the inside.
So here comes the true love
One day a truly stunningly beautiful girl meets an ugly guy at work. Let's just say he is studying at a university or some college and she is studying to become a psychologist.
He is washing dishes and busy working for $8.50 an hour and she is a waitress who keeps on adding dirty dishes to his bench with no room on it for anything else. The whole floor is full of pots and he is going flat out. She gets upset with some of her customers sometimes, but he is always there with understanding and will even stop washing to console her and say:
"People want their own way in life and sometimes the meal and the way you serve them is not to their liking. Most times they are just taking something out on you because they have had a bad day and can find fault in something they didn't like in you or the food. They are simply dumping on you. Don't worry about it," he smiles. "You dump dishes down on me all the time and even when I am busy I have the time to give you a hug and chat, and do you see me complaining? No. That's because this is my job here to wash dirty dishes and make un-appreciated waitresses feel better." Once again he is smiling and he turns back to the dishes. The waitress walks out smiling feeling happier, and happy he is such a giving and positive workmate.
When they have a beer together after the restaurant is closed and after he has asked her about all her dreams and desires in life, and given her his input and his time, she may ask him what he wants to do in his life. He is a simple man. He simply wants to change people's hearts. His simplicity, honesty and creativity are three things that make this woman want to know him more and she is fascinated with how he says that he wants to do for people what she will be doing in therapy. Before long she is standing in front of him, packed with emotion, crying and within a month this woman and her dishwasher are in love, for all the right reasons. She does not see him as ugly and he does not look at her outer shell, and that's why that stunning girl dates that ugly guy.
Postscript.
This was one of the first things I wrote in February, 2010, but I was not sure that this would be something people would read; first, because it was long and second because of the topic. In fact, in my local shopping mall I struck up conversations with four women I did not know, an act of bravery in itself, and asked them if they saw the headline in a magazine, would they pick up the magazine and read it. The girls said yes and then told me I could not leave until I had let them read it.
I invite you to browse through my postings and see if another headline grabs you.
Monday, August 16, 2010
What Does Killing Do To Us?
There are few questions in this world that can generate a long, cold, hard stare like "Have you ever killed someone?" When people find out what I have done in my life, in particular the fact that I have carried a gun for most of my adult life, I occasionally get asked this question. Like a lot of veterans, I am a middle-aged, overweight, balding man now, but, like most middle-aged, overweight, balding veterans, I was once young, had hair, could bench press a Buick and was absolutely certain that I was at least ten-feet tall and bulletproof. This was compounded by the fact that I later became a police officer and continued the uniformed, gun-toting image.
First, let me say that I never killed a man while a police officer, in fact, I never even shot and wounded anyone. I did once shoot at a man, after he shot at me, but I missed...11 times. I missed on purpose, just wanting to make sure he did not stop running away long enough to take another shot at me. This is another story for another time.
In the military, I did shoot and kill...at least four times of which I am aware. There may have been more, but four of which I am certain. One aims, leads a little, squeezes the trigger, feels the recoil and the target collapses. Over a period of five months this occurred four times that I saw. The bodies were recovered and examined and they were most certainly and irretrievably deceased. I had killed them.
While I have a strange sense of guilt associated with their deaths, I am not particularly sorry, if that makes any sense. I know, in my heart of hearts, that that were it not for my killing these men, I would be dead or one or more of my men would be dead. The fact is they died so that others would live. Those that died were defined by the term enemy. They were part of a regular, uniformed army engaged in combat operations against the United States. There will be no war crime allegations, beyond those made by those that make such allegations in any combat scenario. These are more based on the general evil of war than the concept that killing can be justified within the confines of an armed political dispute. Karl Von Clausewitz said of war, "It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means." In the truest sense, I was a pawn in a chess game played out on a countryside with real guns, real bullets and the specific want, need and heartfelt desire to kill the enemy before he killed me.
I can recall each shot, each kill, if you will. The first was in a jungle and it was being in the wrong place at the wrong time for both sides. The enemy was supposed to have pulled out long before we approached, but as usual some dumb SOB didn't get the word or was loafing. They were there when we got there. They had guns, we had guns and as enemies will do, we started shooting at each other.
When the firefight started, I initially performed true to my training. I picked up a point of fire and fired at that point while I sought cover, suppressing the incoming fire, allowing me to get to cover uninjured. I then trained my sights on where that point of fire had been and waited, one Mississippi...two Mississippi and there he was, popped up like a gopher from a hole. I already had my point of aim, so I adjusted and squeezed. The round fired. The recoil and noise were barely recognizable. The round hit the man's head, just above his right eye on the forehead. His head snapped back slightly, just before he fell. There was no massive transfer of energy like you see in the movies. He was not launched backward, was not knocked off his feet and there was no drama to it really. The bullet hit, went straight through his head, killing him and he fell straight down, never to move again.
There was no opportunity for reflection or thought, it was back to the training. Pick up another point of fire, another target, squeeze the trigger. Lather, rinse, repeat....
The second man was running across my line of sight from left to right. I raised the rifle barrel, moving the sight from behind the running man, catching the end of the barrel up to him, crossing just slightly in front of him. I then pulled the trigger twice and heard the "thwack" "thwack" of the impact with the side of his chest. He went down face first, the only thing allowing him to take two more steps was the momentum of his forward motion. He died within a minute due to two high-speed rifle rounds having perforated his right lung, heart and lodging in his left lung.
The third man I killed was a "sapper" that just screwed up. He had fallen and slid down a steep river embankment, more like a levy or dike, and into our compound. The guys on guard duty had him trapped at the back of the compound, running between 50-gallon empty fuel drums. The GI's were shooting at him like a carnival target, but no one could quite hit him. He had a weapon of his own and would fire a burst or two just to let us know it was not really a good idea to go in and get him.
I had been asleep in one of those bunkers within a bunker. My cot was surrounded by sandbags that covered around me to the height above my toes when I lay down. The gunfire got my attention. It sounded like a carnival shooting range, after all, and that is a bit unusual. I arose, put on my boots and in my skivvies walked to the area where all the commotion was. A sergeant told me of he situation. Irritated at having been disturbed from my slumber and the kinds of dreams only young men can truly enjoy, I grabbed an M79, 40MM grenade launcher and told the MP's to fire at the barrels they thought the sapper was hiding behind. When they did, the sapper ran across the area and hid behind another set of 50-gallon drums. I took aim with the 40 MM Grenade Launcher and fired. Three 50-gallon drums and the body of one North Vietnamese Sapper went about thirty feet into the air. The drums were dented and on fire, and the sapper dead, bleeding from the concussion of the high explosive blast. I gave the sergeant the M79 back and went back to bed, happy that the men would no longer be playing with that soldier like a cat plays with a mouse. Partly because I had been disturbed, party because I as appalled by the cruelty of young GI's.
The forth time is a situation that is part of a story that I will save for another time and deserves an entry all its own that I shall save for another time.
I do not find it particularly harsh to have done what I have done. I am really kind of ambivalent. I was doing my job the way I had been trained and it was the right thing to do. I only feel the subtle guilt that comes from wondering how I will be judged for eternity for my actions. I do not feel PTSD, I just did what I had to. If I felt I had to excuse myself in some way, I would simply explain that they were as ready to kill me as I was to kill them. They would have given me every opportunity to die for my country had I not allowed them to die for theirs first.
I no longer have dreams or nightmares about it, although I did for a few months after my first separation from service. I do have faded flashbacks of thought in my mind when I go to the pistol or rifle range. It is a part of my faded past and something I have come to grips with, but I do sometimes wonder how I will explain it to my Maker when the time comes.
First, let me say that I never killed a man while a police officer, in fact, I never even shot and wounded anyone. I did once shoot at a man, after he shot at me, but I missed...11 times. I missed on purpose, just wanting to make sure he did not stop running away long enough to take another shot at me. This is another story for another time.
In the military, I did shoot and kill...at least four times of which I am aware. There may have been more, but four of which I am certain. One aims, leads a little, squeezes the trigger, feels the recoil and the target collapses. Over a period of five months this occurred four times that I saw. The bodies were recovered and examined and they were most certainly and irretrievably deceased. I had killed them.
While I have a strange sense of guilt associated with their deaths, I am not particularly sorry, if that makes any sense. I know, in my heart of hearts, that that were it not for my killing these men, I would be dead or one or more of my men would be dead. The fact is they died so that others would live. Those that died were defined by the term enemy. They were part of a regular, uniformed army engaged in combat operations against the United States. There will be no war crime allegations, beyond those made by those that make such allegations in any combat scenario. These are more based on the general evil of war than the concept that killing can be justified within the confines of an armed political dispute. Karl Von Clausewitz said of war, "It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means." In the truest sense, I was a pawn in a chess game played out on a countryside with real guns, real bullets and the specific want, need and heartfelt desire to kill the enemy before he killed me.
I can recall each shot, each kill, if you will. The first was in a jungle and it was being in the wrong place at the wrong time for both sides. The enemy was supposed to have pulled out long before we approached, but as usual some dumb SOB didn't get the word or was loafing. They were there when we got there. They had guns, we had guns and as enemies will do, we started shooting at each other.
When the firefight started, I initially performed true to my training. I picked up a point of fire and fired at that point while I sought cover, suppressing the incoming fire, allowing me to get to cover uninjured. I then trained my sights on where that point of fire had been and waited, one Mississippi...two Mississippi and there he was, popped up like a gopher from a hole. I already had my point of aim, so I adjusted and squeezed. The round fired. The recoil and noise were barely recognizable. The round hit the man's head, just above his right eye on the forehead. His head snapped back slightly, just before he fell. There was no massive transfer of energy like you see in the movies. He was not launched backward, was not knocked off his feet and there was no drama to it really. The bullet hit, went straight through his head, killing him and he fell straight down, never to move again.
There was no opportunity for reflection or thought, it was back to the training. Pick up another point of fire, another target, squeeze the trigger. Lather, rinse, repeat....
The second man was running across my line of sight from left to right. I raised the rifle barrel, moving the sight from behind the running man, catching the end of the barrel up to him, crossing just slightly in front of him. I then pulled the trigger twice and heard the "thwack" "thwack" of the impact with the side of his chest. He went down face first, the only thing allowing him to take two more steps was the momentum of his forward motion. He died within a minute due to two high-speed rifle rounds having perforated his right lung, heart and lodging in his left lung.
The third man I killed was a "sapper" that just screwed up. He had fallen and slid down a steep river embankment, more like a levy or dike, and into our compound. The guys on guard duty had him trapped at the back of the compound, running between 50-gallon empty fuel drums. The GI's were shooting at him like a carnival target, but no one could quite hit him. He had a weapon of his own and would fire a burst or two just to let us know it was not really a good idea to go in and get him.
I had been asleep in one of those bunkers within a bunker. My cot was surrounded by sandbags that covered around me to the height above my toes when I lay down. The gunfire got my attention. It sounded like a carnival shooting range, after all, and that is a bit unusual. I arose, put on my boots and in my skivvies walked to the area where all the commotion was. A sergeant told me of he situation. Irritated at having been disturbed from my slumber and the kinds of dreams only young men can truly enjoy, I grabbed an M79, 40MM grenade launcher and told the MP's to fire at the barrels they thought the sapper was hiding behind. When they did, the sapper ran across the area and hid behind another set of 50-gallon drums. I took aim with the 40 MM Grenade Launcher and fired. Three 50-gallon drums and the body of one North Vietnamese Sapper went about thirty feet into the air. The drums were dented and on fire, and the sapper dead, bleeding from the concussion of the high explosive blast. I gave the sergeant the M79 back and went back to bed, happy that the men would no longer be playing with that soldier like a cat plays with a mouse. Partly because I had been disturbed, party because I as appalled by the cruelty of young GI's.
The forth time is a situation that is part of a story that I will save for another time and deserves an entry all its own that I shall save for another time.
I do not find it particularly harsh to have done what I have done. I am really kind of ambivalent. I was doing my job the way I had been trained and it was the right thing to do. I only feel the subtle guilt that comes from wondering how I will be judged for eternity for my actions. I do not feel PTSD, I just did what I had to. If I felt I had to excuse myself in some way, I would simply explain that they were as ready to kill me as I was to kill them. They would have given me every opportunity to die for my country had I not allowed them to die for theirs first.
I no longer have dreams or nightmares about it, although I did for a few months after my first separation from service. I do have faded flashbacks of thought in my mind when I go to the pistol or rifle range. It is a part of my faded past and something I have come to grips with, but I do sometimes wonder how I will explain it to my Maker when the time comes.
Moving Bubba's Mobile Home
It was one of those nights you read about at the beginning of mystery novels. It was dark! There was no moon. There were clouds in the sky thick enough to prevent even starlight from coming through. The only thing visible was the cone in front of me that was illuminated by my headlights. Outside that cone of light was the world of boogey men and unseen things that go bump in the night that cause children to hide under their blankies.
As I drove home I was pretty much on auto-pilot. In the instant, if I had been asked, I could not have told you exactly where I was. I knew the road I was on, but not exactly where on that road. I did not need to know really until I got to the intersection some 15 miles further down the road. Until then it was just a matter of managing to stay between the centerline and the white line at the edge of the road.
When I say that it appeared out of nowhere, it was exactly that, it appeared out of nowhere. My first inclination was to ask what would a football be doing in the middle of the road until, in the next instant, I realized it was moving. In a credit to the engineer that designed General Motor's anti-lock breaking system, that I was able to hit the brake, slow my SUV and manuever all at the same time. In middle age, it was no easy task for all of my nuerons to fire at the same time and allow me to accomplish all of this simultaneously as well. I was able too split the uprights with the moving football between my tires, front and back.
My SUV came to rest about 100 feet past the football. I probably should have kept going, but something said, go back, help. I pulled my truck over between the road and a guardrail, got a flashlight out of the back and walked back down the road, carefully looking down the roadway for approaching headlights. The road was as straight as it was black, so I knew I would see any cars coming for several miles.
As I approached, the slowly moving football became more recognizeable as a turtle, or more accurately a tortoise. He was about 12 inches across and had a dark, greenish brown color to him. He had an interesting pattern on his back that did actually resemble a football of sorts. He was slowly, as tortoises tend to do, making his way across the road; probably in an effort to show a possum that it could actually be done. When my flashlight lit him up he stopped and pulled everything into his shell, or as I was told as a child, his "home." I smiled as I thought that since he was on a roadway it must be a mobile home, and Jeff Foxworthy-style redneck jokes crept into my thinking. A redneck turtle with a mobile home? I immediately decided to name him Bubba.
I walked up to Bubba and got behind him. His nose would have been on the centerline had he not been all tucked inside his shell and he had at least another 15 feet to get to the other side of the road. I grabbed his shell on either side and hefted him to about waist height. I then walked him over to the side of the road to which he was headed and placed him on the other side of the guard rail. My first thought was whether he would, for whatever reason, turn around and go back to the side of the road from which he had come. A dumb redneck thing to do. My second thought was whether I had committed a federal felony by "molesting" some endangered species. It would be just like some government bureaucrat to charge me for preventing the beast from being killed on the highway. I could see him arguing the need for this turtle to be allowed to be killed in some Darwinian "circle of life" logic. In my head, I argued that cars should not figure in the circle of life.
As I watched, the tortoise popped his head slowly out of his shell and, after making sure the coast was clear, continued in the same direction he was going, away from the road. I have to admit, I was hoping for him to stop and look back, like in all the fairy tales and fables, but he just kind of plodded into the thick grass, my satisfaction with having done a good thing having to come from within.
I went back to my truck and wondered if he would have made it on his own as I walked back. I wondered if a policeman would have stopped and given me a ticket for creating a hazard, first by stopping so abruptly and second by pulling off the roadway on such a dark night. Finally, I just thought that it made no difference because I was alone and if I had committed a crime or series of crimes, it had been perfect. There were no skid marks, no witnesses, no damage. I would never be caught.
I continued my drive home, a little satisfied at having done something good and a little more careful and wondering, who's gonna come up with a law to require turtles to have lights on them?
As I drove home I was pretty much on auto-pilot. In the instant, if I had been asked, I could not have told you exactly where I was. I knew the road I was on, but not exactly where on that road. I did not need to know really until I got to the intersection some 15 miles further down the road. Until then it was just a matter of managing to stay between the centerline and the white line at the edge of the road.
When I say that it appeared out of nowhere, it was exactly that, it appeared out of nowhere. My first inclination was to ask what would a football be doing in the middle of the road until, in the next instant, I realized it was moving. In a credit to the engineer that designed General Motor's anti-lock breaking system, that I was able to hit the brake, slow my SUV and manuever all at the same time. In middle age, it was no easy task for all of my nuerons to fire at the same time and allow me to accomplish all of this simultaneously as well. I was able too split the uprights with the moving football between my tires, front and back.
My SUV came to rest about 100 feet past the football. I probably should have kept going, but something said, go back, help. I pulled my truck over between the road and a guardrail, got a flashlight out of the back and walked back down the road, carefully looking down the roadway for approaching headlights. The road was as straight as it was black, so I knew I would see any cars coming for several miles.
As I approached, the slowly moving football became more recognizeable as a turtle, or more accurately a tortoise. He was about 12 inches across and had a dark, greenish brown color to him. He had an interesting pattern on his back that did actually resemble a football of sorts. He was slowly, as tortoises tend to do, making his way across the road; probably in an effort to show a possum that it could actually be done. When my flashlight lit him up he stopped and pulled everything into his shell, or as I was told as a child, his "home." I smiled as I thought that since he was on a roadway it must be a mobile home, and Jeff Foxworthy-style redneck jokes crept into my thinking. A redneck turtle with a mobile home? I immediately decided to name him Bubba.
I walked up to Bubba and got behind him. His nose would have been on the centerline had he not been all tucked inside his shell and he had at least another 15 feet to get to the other side of the road. I grabbed his shell on either side and hefted him to about waist height. I then walked him over to the side of the road to which he was headed and placed him on the other side of the guard rail. My first thought was whether he would, for whatever reason, turn around and go back to the side of the road from which he had come. A dumb redneck thing to do. My second thought was whether I had committed a federal felony by "molesting" some endangered species. It would be just like some government bureaucrat to charge me for preventing the beast from being killed on the highway. I could see him arguing the need for this turtle to be allowed to be killed in some Darwinian "circle of life" logic. In my head, I argued that cars should not figure in the circle of life.
As I watched, the tortoise popped his head slowly out of his shell and, after making sure the coast was clear, continued in the same direction he was going, away from the road. I have to admit, I was hoping for him to stop and look back, like in all the fairy tales and fables, but he just kind of plodded into the thick grass, my satisfaction with having done a good thing having to come from within.
I went back to my truck and wondered if he would have made it on his own as I walked back. I wondered if a policeman would have stopped and given me a ticket for creating a hazard, first by stopping so abruptly and second by pulling off the roadway on such a dark night. Finally, I just thought that it made no difference because I was alone and if I had committed a crime or series of crimes, it had been perfect. There were no skid marks, no witnesses, no damage. I would never be caught.
I continued my drive home, a little satisfied at having done something good and a little more careful and wondering, who's gonna come up with a law to require turtles to have lights on them?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)