"The Bullshit Of Life"

Lately, my pal Sir Buzz-of-the-Asheboro-Armfields (his honorary YaYa name) has been my blogging muse. 

This morning was no different when (once again) I answered the phone at the ungodly-when-I-don't-have-a-C-Section-to-attend hour of 7:15 AM to hear the chipper/wide-awake-since-5-AM Buzzman regaling me with assorted "deep thoughts".  Lately, my good-friend-with-the-right-name is alternating between being very wired or very numb. 

There's a reason for that.

You see, this past month, Sir Buzz and his Missus, the Fair Lady Rebecca, shipped their only son off to war. 

That's right.  Buzz's beloved son, a Marine, is in Afghanistan.

This morning, with his tongue-firmly-in-his-cheek, Buzz told me he had received belated, fourth-hand word that his son had "assisted in evicting a family of Taliban" from their dwelling" . . . he very drolly added that he could not imagine why.  Trying to keep the mood upbeat, I countered, "Maybe they had their mortgage through Community One?" 

But it kinda fell flat.

Buzz went on to tell me that while dining out in a fine Greensboro establishment earlier in the week, he and his wife were treated to the spectacle of a man who made a total ass of himself because it was horribly inconvenient for him not to be able run a bar tab (don't tell anyone in Asheboro, but the economy is apparently so bad that you have to pay as you drink).

The man's self-absorbed performance particularly miffed the Fair Lady Rebecca . . . normally a fairly even-tempered woman . . . who nevertheless wanted to slug the soon-to-be-drunken-no-matter-how-he-paid-for-his-booze MORON loudly whining about his "rights" at the bar.

Buzz described her urge - which he shared - as "having a very low tolerance for the bullshit of life" . . . given what they will now be worrying about every minute of every day (and in their dreams) for the next at-least-7-months.

Now, sharing the following will probably embarrass Sir Buzz, and destroy his hard-won, finely-honed reputation as a gruff-old-bastard, but this is what he had to say in a recent e-mail (about his feelings as his son hopped a plane for the first leg of the journey to the sandbox-from-Hell):

" . . . and if I could go in Ben's place, I would, and if I could give my life for his, I would. It was just hard to think back on him when he was little playing at war . . . and now this."

I reminded my friend that it was a noble notion, but we both know how this country plays the game.  It does not want Buzz's blood - nor what's left of mine.  And it eats its young.

His son has been trained well.  The rest is up to Whatever one believes in that lets one sleep at night.

Which brings me to this story on CNN . . . courtesy of a whole lot of people, of like mind, who are equally disgusted with the bullshit of life . . .

. . . especially a press & public obsessed with sex-crazed-cokehead-TV stars-that-wrote-the-chapter-next-to-John-Edwards-in-the-book-on-malignant-narcissim . . . as opposed to the real heroes of life.

I divorced Facebook (twice).  But I am with these folks in spirit.

Semper Fi.