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JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN Michael L. Newell Estonia |
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JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN
(Tashkent International School, 1998-99) It was, as usual, a time of sabre rattling someplace in the world. I can not recall where or why, but students were arguing who should do what to some enemy they could not even find on the map. One lad stood and announced that we, (we being America, although he had been born in Afghanistan) could kick their (their meant anyone not American) butts faster and harder than Shaq could throw down a dunk. I suggested war is not a sporting contest, neither is it a movie where the dead bodies get up after a scene is shot and talk about where to go for dinner, that fathers and mothers lose sons and daughters, that children lose parents, that wounds are not self-healing, that missing arms and legs and eyes do not magically regenerate. He sat. He scowled and said you are not even a real American. You root for the wrong side. Which team are you for anyway? I could have tried again. I could have shouted, scolded, argued. Instead I told the class to take out their books and read the next chapter. I hid in the routine of school life. I crouched in thickets of words and essays and discussions about verb tenses and pronoun usage. Perhaps I could have ambushed him with some Wilfred Owen or Yusuf Komunyakaa poetry. Maybe I could have used words from Gandhi or Martin Luther King. He was only twelve, though, and I was not, am not, that skilled. The leaders of my country talked about us and them. How was I to convince this boy that such words destroyed lives, burned cities, left fertile fields in ruins--littered with mines and broken bodies? He was in a classroom with Malay, Korean, Iraqi, Israeli, Palestinian, Indian, Bangladeshi, and blue-eyed, cornflower haired American daughter of an Air Force NCO. They played together, ate together, visited one anotheršs home, danced and sang together, yet he saw the world as battling teams. He yearned for glory. Michael L. Newell [Return to Psychopoetica home page] ©The contents of this page are copyright protected. | |