Wednesday, August 16, 2006
ANOTHER THING I WILL ALLOW YOU TO KNOW
Brendalove@gmail.com
What a busy week so far! Before I get started, let me tell you that I probably won't have a blog post tomorrow. Unless I sneak one in while I'm at work. Don't count on it. Because tonight is the Jeff Tweedy solo show and I'm really excited about it. I've seen Wilco before...loved 'em....so I'm stoked about this.
Also, I took college placement exams Tuesday night....extreme stress! More on that later, too.
And finally - update on the hornet - I was able to lure him outside before he met his nuclear fate!
This story concerns an incident involving my ex-boyfriend. I'm not saying which one but I'll give you a hint....I broke up with him because he would never shut up.
So one night I was over at He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named's house, and he started talking (of course) about his Grandfather and his Grandfather's war experiences. It seems "Granddaddy" served as an infantryman in World War II and was real damn good at it. He killed a lot of German men. Apparently Granddaddy had a dark side, too. When he killed Germans, he also plundered them and took their jewelry, medals, any cash they might have had....just whatever. He-Whose-Name-I-Never-Speak went into his closet and brought this huge box out and we looked through it. It was all of Granddaddy's "war trophies".
There were rings and rings and more rings. There were rings symbolizing involvement in masonry and other groups I couldn't tell what they were. There were rings that were awarded for atheletic excellence in some kind of German sports competition that appeared to be similar to the Olympics. There were wedding rings, which I found particularly sad. There were medals which were issued to German men in World War I. These medals indicated the men's names...these were real men....men that might still mean the world to somebody somewhere. There were several German Iron Crosses....most of them indicated they were received in World War I....but there was one World War II German Iron Cross. The Unnamed One said that Hitler always personally awarded the Iron Cross. I don't know if that's true but I held it in my hand and it felt evil, if that's possible. And then there was the money....money from Germany, Polish money, Japanese money, money that I didn't know where the hell it was from...coins...and a huge wad of bills that were bound together and beginning to crumble from age. And finally, a silver German sword, taken from a soldier as he lay dead somewhere. I held it and wondered if anyone had lost their life to its blade.
The whole thing was disturbing. I know our soldiers were required to do unthinkable things...yet I would like to think that most still had enough integrity left that they would not plunder a dead man's body for money and trinkets. Or am I just being naive? Then there was the spooky feeling of handling objects that were taken from real men, dead men. Enemy or not, most of those were people just like you and me who had been propaganda-ised to death by a charismatic madman and felt like they were doing the right thing for their country. In some instances, some of those rings or medals might be the only thing left to symbolize that this person ever walked the Earth.
By that time, I also knew I was never going to marry the Unnamed One, so I breathed a sigh of relief that I was never going to have to live in a house with those objects.
Posted by brendalove@gmail.com @ 10:38 AM
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