I'm seven years old when I ask my Dad about his past career. I had seen pictures of him then--a handsome young man in a jumpsuit and helmet, leg propped up on cockpit of a fighter jet. He was every boy's hero, and as I stand in my kitchen before him at the age of seven, he seems like an average father: balding, with wrinkles forming on his face, tanned to a leathery darkness from the sun. He is like the raisin of a past captured in pictures of a young soldier.
And that's when I ask my Dad about his job for the first time: "Did you kill any bad guys?" It's an excited question, spurred by video games--007's Golden Eye for N64--and being a veteran myself of neighborhood Nerf wars. As he turns to look at me, he says nothing. He is quiet, as if he is about to scold me for being too loud.
But he doesn't. His voice comes out, slow, with a thoughtful purpose I never have heard before. He doesn't answer me at all. He just looks at me, through me almost: "There aren't really 'bad guys' out there, Chris." He pauses. "And there aren't really 'good guys' either. Everyone in the world is doing what they think is right, and that's all they can do. When a war happens, its just comes down to two men doing what they think is right, and sometimes even what they think is wrong." He is quiet again.
It's a Sunday night. The next day I have school, but I don't know that I won't learn anything nearly as important for the next eleven years.
