For the past couple of weeks, my sixteen-year old son has been expressing an interest in joining the military after high school. The Marines, in particularly. He likes the idea of getting into shape, having a steady job, and feels like he could benefit from the structure. He enjoys hunting and target shooting and would also like to get the firearms training. Last, and hopefully not least in his eyes, he even expresses a desire to serve his country.
My wife and I have raised a good kid. Does he have issues? Of course he does. He’s sixteen and he’s in the transition from boyhood to manhood. Thankfully, he’s not the nightmare that I was for my parents at his age. Well at least not yet , hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself. At his age I was smoking pot and skipping school, and the last thing I would have ever dreamed of was joining the military. I laughed at the kids in ROTC and mocked recruiters efforts on campus. I was extremely anti-establishment.
Yesterday, when I received the packet in the mail that he requested from the Marines, I was so proud and so scared at the same time. Believe me, those are strange emotions to have simultaneously. I am proud, not just because he wants to serve his country, but because he has a sense of the direction in his life. He makes good decisions and he’s self motivated. I am scared because, well, it’s the military. There’s a great chance that he will be sent into combat. There’s a great chance that he will witness atrocities. There’s a great chance that, well…anyway, that’s the struggle that I’m going through.
I won’t say that I didn’t see this coming. Part of the reason that I campaigned so hard for President Obama was because I thought my son might decide to join the armed forces. Amongst many other things, I wanted his Commander-in-Chief to have the judgement and the vision not to send my child into a “dumb” war. On top of all of the other countries where we have a troop presence, I know that by the time my son is eighteen, we will still be in Iraq and Afghanistan and who knows where else. Having a foreign policy that is headed in the right direction is some comfort, but combat is combat, regardless of who the President is.
Being an adviser on something of this magnitude is not an easy thing to do. When you love a person and you don’t want to see them get hurt, you tend to give biased and selfish advice. Hopefully, I’ll be able to shelve my human emotions and be the father that he needs during this time in his life. My son still has another year before he has to make a decision on the military. I know he will make a wise decision. This makes me proud. This makes me scared.
Crossed on filibusted