Todays Eight Word Poem
The Army has opened a recruitment center in a local mall here. The dramatic duotone Posters all of the inside of the train say it features several simulators: Apache, Blackhawk & Humvee, and that they have an arcade and cafe.
As a guy, these simulation things look fun, but only because they are not real. Now that I am an adult I dont take for granted for a single minute how very different and horrifying the real experience must be. Nor can I fully express the gratitude that I have that their are people willing to defend us when called.
I'm curious how effective this new recruitment angle will be at attracting the video gaming kids of today. I can remember a recruiter cornering me in a hallway of my High School
Joe the Recruiter: (dressed impressivley with lots of medals and insignia and stripes)"So what are your plans after High School."
Teenage SB: (also dressed impressivley in an Iron Maiden 3/4 sleeve concert t-shirt and some well worn black corderoys) "Uhhhh...going to college"
Joe the Recruiter: (physically blocking SB from going to the lunchroom. An all around BAD move if you want SB to ever join your little Army) "We have over 100 different jobs that can give you real world experience AND give you money for college. What is it that you plan to study?"
Teenage SB: "Uhhhh...art"
Joe the Recruiter: (silence)
So this morning, I saw someone had scrawled something in ballpoint on one of these posters. I was doubly delighted to see that it was eight words long. Here's what it said:
It is a war crime
to recruit children
5 comments:
beauty.
Great poem.
also, I had that same 3/4 sleeve Iron Maiden shirt. We were bad-ass.
on behalf of
14 year old boys,
thanks!
Amazing, isn't it? And we are paying for it.
I agree that recruiting "children" is wrong (I don't think anyone can argue with that), but don't think the video game angle is meant to recruit children per se. The video gaming crowd is much larger than that.
Like it or not, the decision making process to join the military often starts at a young age for some men and women. I knew when I was 12 that I was going to join the Navy (only to be like my dad). Much of our Armed Forces are built with men and women who've aspired to be soldiers and sailors from a young age. Honestly, I'd rather have an army of people who aspired to become soldiers than an army of kids who were cornered in a high school hallway and given a slick speech.
The legal age to join the Army and most of the other Armed Forces is 17. I was 17 and fresh out of high school when I went to Naval boot camp in the summer of '92. I then served my six years and got educated. I'll agree that most 17 to 20 year olds lack the maturity to deal with being shipped halfway across the world and shoot at people, but that's another issue altogether. Or is it?
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