During the prayers of the congregation today, I found out that the cousin of a member was killed in action in Iraq last week. Since I do not personally know anyone who is active duty, two degrees of separation is about as close as I’m going to get. I believe he was pretty close to me in age.
For some reason, that roots some of the names that appear in the news in reality, just by knowing someone who knew them. Pulls them out of the number of killed and wounded.
While I was home for Winter Break, someone from my hometown was killed in Iraq. In fact, we overlapped in middle school and high school, so though I don’t remember meeting him, I could have stood in line behind him in the cafeteria for all I know. I’m sure I know someone who knows someone who knew him well. My brother knew him from being in NJROTC together and he went to his funeral.
The scary thing is, someone I do know pretty well is signed up for the Army and is basically going to start training as soon as he graduates from high school in June. In fact, he’s probably fair game the moment he turns 18. We were neighbors, I hung out with him a lot even though it was his older sister that I was friends with. (And she herself is frighteningly married and the mother of an infant.) Every time I hear one of these stories, I think of him.
Nurd Up!