I was home sick from middle school, either really or because I put forth the effort to pretend to be sick enough with a cold to stay home.
I was watching cartoons, classic Looney Tunes I believe it was on Cartoon Network, since we were able to afford cable television for the first time after my mom passed away from lung cancer. I remember in those days there was a storm and emergency warning system mandated for all channels where text would flow across the bottom of the screen.
At first I thought it was a storm warning and ignored it. After I read it, I pondered how it was strange that they would bother using an emergency system to tell anyone watching cartoons that a plane accident had happened. After it repeated immediately after the first scroll I decided it was important enough to check the news and quickly realized it wasn't an accident, despite how hopeful the reporter may have sounded when discussing the possibility before the second plane hit. I had managed to turn the channel in time to see the second plane and footage of people jumping from the building(s) being played. The latter made me helplessly want to call and ask why no one had strung up netting or one of those inflatable things to cushion landings, although now I assume it would not have helped from that height.
I had read a large number of military history books due to my interest in video games (notably WW2 flying sims like Aces of the Pacific, WW1 flying games like Red Baron 1 and 2, and ground-pounder games like Close Combat) and I knew the country was headed to war. I had read quite a bit about the civil war, WW1, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam for my age compared to my peers, and I was very afraid for my future and was very worried I'd be expecting a draft by the time I graduated high school. Even after I graduated highschool in 2005 I was worried enough that another country would take advantage of America fighting a two front war to begin forcing a global war that I was attempting to earn a few pilot credentials, not only because I would have enjoyed being a pilot but because that way at least my possible Commanders-in-future might at least see fit to give me an excellent machine and the training to use it. I got about as far in that as can be expected in such an expensive hobby as private piloting, which is to say the pilot's ground schooling my high school assessment test awards payed for.
One thing I can't speak highly enough of the Bush administration is that they did not really try hard to institute the draft. After all, there was certainly historical precedent for such a thing, and early on it would have had some support. I'm not overly happy with the way things have worked out, but I'll always remember that it could be worse. I was angry at Bush for a long time about many things, but I'd shake his hand for not forcing me to fight for him.
As to why I didn't join the military, where I may have done a lot of good, I had watched too many war documentaries and read too many books and killed too many people in video games as the general who sends a squad of guys with rifles at the flamethrower tank because they have a few grenades left. Thinking about casualty numbers in various wars is not a way to become one. Another reason was because I hated being forced to exercise due to being in poor physical condition when I tried middleschool football, to the point that I didn't want to play anymore for the rest of my schooling. By around 2004 I had managed to work myself into good enough physical shape to be able to perform physical activities to an acceptable degree, which I am in to this day (most of the time anyways. sometimes I get a lil chubby in Summer when it's 95+ degrees hot in my room [not helped by computer exhaust] with no AC until I get back to working out again when the season cools) I simply didn't want to be forced to dance to someone else's tune. Also my early doubts about the necessity and implementation of the wars were beginning to ring true by 2005, and I had then and have a feeling to this day that my impact in the wars would be less over there than had I not stayed stateside and made my thoughts known in my local area and on the internet and to do my fighting with words against the mistakes of men on any side of the conflict.
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Topic: 11th of September, 2001 (Read 5667 times)