Dear Editor,
Just as we old boomers were about to ride off into our dusty sunsets without ever being called to serve our country, young Justin hits the airwaves looking wiser than I thought he ever could in that salt’n’pepper beard, and calls us to serve. Wow!
I am quite proud of my generation. We have come a long way from our parents world, ending wars (at home at least), curbing runaway corporations, welcoming women back from being less equal, tolerating a persons right to be who they wish as long as they don’t hurt anyone else, focusing on the health of our planet and developing worldwide communications systems are all things that have propelled our civilization forward in ways my dear granny could never have imagined.
However, we are the first generation in the western world that did not go out and kill or be killed for our country and the few remaining “even-dustier” members of the previous generation challenge our manhood at every possible opportunity despite the fact that most of them received a farmers dispensation and so avoided the draft by, ahem, “serving at home”.
“So what?” You might ask, but when the President of the United States bestows upon himself the coveted title of “war hero” for singlehandedly battling the giant Corona virus on behalf all Americans, we know that despite our modern outlook, this throwback to be a hero in a more brutal time is still important to us.
When I was called upon to serve my country, I have to say I was smiley all over, it felt so good. I did a final shop, cleaned the old gun, cancelled my appointments, locked the doors and went upstairs to connect safely and remotely to my online community for at least two weeks and likely more. I know my old ancestors, lying around in the Crimea, South Africa, Belgium and beneath the Atlantic waters will be clinking their heavenly glasses and toasting their weak-kneed progeny in an unbroken ancestral chain of service to the country, because I was called, and yes. I went!
As I hunker down to await my fate, I can take satisfaction in knowing that the enemy will be vanquished as long as we don’t behave antisocially by being social until this ordeal is over. I can take satisfaction that my grandkids, whose lives are not yet fully lived and who have no retirement stashed away to fund the rebirth of our new world, are much safer than their old grandad who has long outlived any usefulness that he might have had. In a worst case scenario, I will be proudly clinking glasses with those pieces of my lost ancestors as my young family flick the dust from their lapels and move on to greater things than I could ever imagine.
Is it too much to ask for a plaque to adorn the legion walls?
Simon Tunley of Foresters Falls
