Marine Corps calling

 

The caller ID reads “US MARINE CORPS”.

I reach for the phone, and in the fraction of a second it takes for the words “US MARINE CORPS” to register in my brain, I become every mother who has ever existed. Or at least every mother who’s ever existed since that first fateful day when Moonwatcher showed up at the cave door, recruiting for the Great War Against the People Who Live On the Other Side of the Sand Dune From Us or whatever the hell it was.

 

CALLER: Hello, may I speak to [my eldest son; the one who graduated from high school last month]?

 

ME: Uhh, hello. Is this the Marine Corps?

 

CALLER: Yes, ma’am. I’m [whatever he said his name is]. I’m assigned to the High School. And, despite what you may have heard…

 

He sounds tired and a little bit defensive. How many times today has he launched into this little spiel?

 

CALLER: …we actually have spoken face to face with only a third of the seniors.

 

There were 801 students in the EPHS Class of 2006. One third of 801 would be 267.

 

CALLER: Still, by the end of this year I’m required to make contact by phone with everyone in the class I haven’t spoken to yet.

 

Required. He’s required to contact everyone. He’s just doing his job, after all. He’s just following orders. I wonder how much time this statement buys him before the mothers start slamming the phone down or start screaming NEVER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?! NEVER! NEVER! NEVER! Or maybe I’m imagining that every mother in Eden Prairie would react to this call like I’m reacting.

 

CALLER: Is [Eldest Son] home?

 

ME: No. He’s at work right now.

 

Eldest Son is actually in the next room, simultaneously eating a bowl of Cheerios, playing Battlefield 1942 online with seven of his buds, text-messaging a (female) friend, and watching an mp4 of “Downfall” on his iPod. He doesn’t have to leave for work for another 45 minutes.

 

ME: I realize you still have to talk to him personally, but please let me just shorten this process. All you really need to know is: This is not going to happen.

 

I don’t know how to put it any more emphatically.

 

Bessie to the sexton: “Curfew must not ring tonight!”

Gandalf to the Balrog: “You. Shall. Not. Pass!”

 

ME: And I want you to know that I have all the respect in the world for the people in uniform; the people who are laying their lives on the line for all of us every day. You deserve better than what you’re getting. A LOT better. We owe you so very much… The least — the LEAST we can do now is to get you out of harm’s way as soon as possible. I stand with Jack Murtha on this: if I could bring you all home tomorrow I would. And that’s all I have to say about that.

 

I hope he liked the little Forrest Gump flourish at the end there.

 

CALLER: Ma’am, I understand what you’re saying, and I do appreciate it. I will ask you tho if you could please do one thing for us.

 

What? Bake them some cookies?  Send body armor?  Arrange for a soul transplant for Donald Rumsfeld?

ME: Sure.

 

CALLER: Ma’am, will you pray for us?

 

ME: Absolutely. Doing that already. Every day.

 

CALLER: Thank you. Well, I won’t keep you. I’ll have to catch [Eldest Son] another time then.

 

“Catch him” ? You’ll have to “catch him”? Hey buddy — I’m praying for you all, no question about it, but try “catching” any child of mine in any other way than by phone, and you might have to “catch” the bag containing your nuts which I will be throwing in your face. Trust me, you do not want to mess with me in this regard. Hoo-fucking-ya.

 

[End of phone call]

 

Yeah, I’m good at bluster — especially the internal, unspoken kind as just illustrated above.  But don’t think for a second that I don’t know just how empty all that tough talk is. We still have a volunteer army and he’s 18 and if he decides he wants to join, there’s not much I could do about it.

But, the chances of him or his brother wanting to enlist are roughly equivalent to the chances of Dick Cheney winning the Nobel Peace Prize, so I’m not too worried.

I’m also not terribly worried–yet– about the draft being reinstated. It won’t happen until the administration can figure out a way to include a loophole exclusively for wealthy Republicans so they can keep their own precious children out of it ; their kids being so much more valuable than ours and all.   Hoo-fucking-ya  indeed.