Saturday, January 31, 2004 :::
 
An easy night last night, and so A Mind That Suits idled in the old neighborhood, something he has not really been free to do this past week. A burger at Ye Olde Neighborhood Pub, and then some whiling away of hours at Ye Olde Neighborhood Pool Club. Perhaps a bad decision, the last part, because the regulars at what the English like to call "the local" are likely to skip Friday and Saturday nights, and indeed, A Mind That Suits could find none of his friends. The bar was filled with young and youngish people, doing what young people do best, which is cast off a lot of energy. It was a while before even a seat became available, and when a couple finally left, A Mind That Suits found himself seated next to a lad who obviously spent his working hours in selfless and dangerous service to the rich and privileged young people partying in the rest of the room.

In other words, he was a soldier.

He was college age--21--and for a kid who never went to college, he had a remarkable education. Uncle Sam obviously recognized real talent when it had washed ashore from somewhere out there in the Heartland (a mixed metaphor if ever there was one), and he could go against most recent graduates of our elite schools in an understanding of other peoples and the dangers that we face.

In other words, our freedom depends on guys like this, and this writer was honored to be in his company. Recently married, and the proud father of a baby girl who had been born 9 months from the wedding day while Dad was out defending her, said young man was simply killing time while posted here to Walter Reed. (Inquiring after the maladies of others is disgusting, if one is not invited to do so, and whatever brought him here cannot be revealed on this website, because the author has no idea.) He proudly showed off his wedding ring, so his wife need have no fear, and besides, Ye Olde Neighborhood Pool Hall is a peculiarly sexless place, as nearly everyone other than the regulars shows up in groups.

Said young warrior had indeed returned recently from Iraq, and he is a member of one of the Divisions whose commander actually understood what to do, and so operated very far outside the feeble battle plan which left our soldiers so needlessly exposed. The lad recognized his good fortune in being under a real commander, and despised some people also despised by this writer.

A Mind That Suits had just that day begun reading a book by a commentator whose quotidian work he finds hard to stomach. Indeed, rare is the column by the commentator that he can get all the way through, so self-congratulatory and condescending are they. The book is about why Westerners almost always win wars against others, and it, one mus say, is superb. As with some other historians who feel compelled to comment on the current war, one wishes he had stayed in the library stacks, but this book is really good. And he makes clear that the West nearly always wins because its systems allow commanders to benefit from the services of such as this young man who has, in sharp contrast to the preferred way of our elites whose children were packing the pool hall last night, so bravely embraced life's responsibilities, and God Save These United States.

Boys Will Be Boys.

A previous late night this week at Ye Old Neighborhood Pool Hall was rather more normal. A youngish man has joined the ranks of the regulars. Youngish, because he is several years out of school, but he still has the normal and healthy young man's lack of girth. Indeed, he is short and slight, but broad shouldered with long arms and a nose to match, giving him a slightly puppet-ish air. Wisely or unwisely, he has lately added a Van Dyck to the general style, ie., a goattee with a mustache, adding thereby some inches to the arc passing from his eyebrows downward. And one night, unwisely (without doubt), he decided to keep on a bright red ski cap with white snowflakes. The other regulars, who are all a mite older, appraised the situation, and every time he left the conversation to return to his pool game, they broke out into the Smurf song. It was not an unfair comparison.

The older guys--all single--were not just making fun, but driven to it by the fact that said utterly normal looking young man has a girlfriend who is technically--oh, what's the phrase--a total babe. That night she was sporting bell bottoms and a tight T-shirt, and let's hear it for bell-bottoms and tight T-shirts.

Plus ca change, as the French are wont to say, plus ca meme chose.
(With apologies to purists, because Blogspot will not support the French alphabet.)


Have a good one.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 1:33 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.