Life is so boring right now. Never thought I would post such a diary but it has been a boring week once they began actually doing something for the stranded and dying in New Orleans. I have spit fire about Iraq for like forever and then a soothing balm was applied two days ago. I spoke with a reporter over the phone who is part of a very well covered story coming out in a few months about soldiers coming home with combat stress and being redeployed while taking meds and she is also hunting and finding soldiers who experienced it in theater and were given meds and their gun back while still in combat. She shared one interview with me where the soldier had been told that because of the meds he wasn’t allowed to drive but he could still carry a gun………God it’s getting pathetic over there isn’t it? She told me that Military Families Speak Out had sent some emails out and she had received fifty replies when she walked in the office the next morning, I’m sure more will follow too. Below the fold is a story from my daughter’s life and I asked her today if I could share it because maybe someone will get a chuckle or a kick out of it and we all could probably use a few.
As this nation struggles against and with racism at least some of the youth are having fun with it, and flirting too in the process I think. Leave it to my daughter though to be really jacking with people’s minds here in Bama. I can’t imagine where she gets the internal drive to pull some of the things that she does!
I will give her credit for being the most color blind person I have known in my life thusfar and in the midst of high school in the South she is still who she is. She has the style though to pull of challenging things and getting away with it. I guess she has made a new friend too who is male and black. I haven’t met him yet but she says that he is smart and pretty (no flirting involved in all of this I’m sure!) and his name is Lamarius.
My daughter and Lamarius have had a great week this past week staging attacks all over the high school. My daughter claims that they really freaked out about 5 teachers so far (including the principal) by playing “pretty white girl being choked by the evil black boy”. They make it look serious up until the targeted teacher is freaking (usually my daughter has her back to the teacher and Lamarius is facing them with his hands around her throat but looking out of the corner of his eye slyly towards the target) and then they dissolve into laughter and walk away pretending that they didn’t even know a teacher was nearby and freaking out and running towards them. Just high school kids at horse play you silly freaky teacher!
Apparently the two also say things to each other about their racial roots that are a little off color also, and they both find it terribly funny. On Friday I guess my daughter was really saying some “bad” stuff, and behind her a whole group of black students were walking by and she hadn’t a clue. He let her finish and then spun her around so she could see the other students and he said, “Gee, you almost died.” I do pray. I pray nightly to that wonderful angel who saves so many teenagers repeatedly over and over and over again so that one day they too can have such a teenager to pray for!
had PTSD after returning from his second tour in Iraq. He got zero help. Was told that he would get an appointment with the chaplain for crist’s sake, but the chaplain ducked it repeatedly. He was promised stress management classes which never materialized. He finally was given a pamphlet on stress and then shipped back to Iraq.
Bastards.
What is happening to your family and the extent that it has happened is shocking. Utterly shocking. Please, please, please call this reporter. They need lots of reports and lots of facts to check and what has happened to your nephew is atrocious and people must know…….they simply must know! Her name is Lisa Chedekel and she is with the Hartford Courant. Her email is chedekel@courant.com and her phone number is 860-977-9845. Please leave a message or email to her all about the chaplan ducking and that he was shipped back into combat with these symptoms. Your story is one of the stories that we need. Please respond to this if you see it. I will also email you too. I want anybody else though reading this blog and having to deal with this stuff witness support and action of others in breaking the silence. The silence will kill, it will kill our loved ones, and sometimes it kills entire families when soldiers snap. You are number #1 in my prayers.
I’ve had PTSD for 10 years now. The last place anyone with PTSD needs to be is in the midst of a war – with a gun. It’s truly crazy-making and you’re just not yourself anymore until you learn how to deal with it. And that takes a long time. Encourage your nephew to find more information and whatever help he can. Here’s one good site to start at. He needs to understand what he’s going through and others need to know that PTSD is a normal response to abnormal conditions.
I can’t imagine where she gets the internal drive to pull some of the things that she does!
I have a sneaking suspiscion where that internal drive came from…and I’m looking forward to meeting the originator next week! š
Tracy–that is absolutely hilarious- wonder where your daughter got her feistiness? HAHAHA
The only thing that gives me hope these days is stories like this — thanks Tracy!
I want to share this observation I have had concerning the race issues, with my grandchildren, now girl 13 and boy 10 here in ca. with a big Spanish immigration population
They live in Tustin, Ca. a fairly prosperous city here, but there is a kind of dividing line between the have’s and have more’s. So my grandchildren fell into the have’s a little and attended schools where the population is 95 % Latino and Black, the remainder caucasion.
My grandson, a red head and blond headed grandaughter stand out like a beacon in a sea of dark hair. So here we have discrimination in reverse, and cauc. kids often have a difficult time assimilating into the Latino group dynamics, especially since most of these children are recent immigrants and English is not their first language. Every school meeting has to be in English and Spanish, very tedious for those attending events.
They have adjusted well, these two kids who had spent 1 year in Alabama, Tracy (BTW), and are very much accepted into the group, grandaughters best friend is Black, and most are Latino. Not all children are so fortunate. Many culture clashes.
Now, if you live a few miles across town you might very well be in a school that is 95% white, 5%Latino so there you have another dynamic and much better equipped schools BTW, lots of school board problems here.
Add to that equation the cross town rivalries which often break down racially due to the schools makeup and that can leave the smaller percentage group in any area at risk from attacks by the other. Which does happen all too frequently among these children.
and my exhippy teachers had all 100 students from all of the classes all joined together in singing folk songs, and we all swayed to the music – in my second grade brain I thought that the whole world would have peace now. I knew that it hadn’t always been peaceful and loving, but now it would be. That inner child never gives up.
The three most important words in the English, or any language:
NEVER GIVE UP
Sounds like your daughter’s got her head screwed on straight. Good job!