iraq

If I can be perfectly blunt, his humanities teacher was an ass.

All my life my dad felt this need to protect his kids from a war he fought, a war I believed could never reach out and touch us, could never hurt us__nd yet he fed us lies with his answers, shielding us from the truth about what he did there, about what he saw, about who he was before the war, and about what he became because of it. He lied to protect us from his memories, from his nightmares. Standing with my dad at The Wall, I knew the truth__o one could know so many names engraved in granite if he 'never was in danger.

The last two days I__e been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It__ late and dark, but I__ so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.

I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we__ started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He__ go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I__ give anything to go back to the day before 9/11__ut all we can do is move forward.

I felt so much pride, so much love. You get a handful of days like this in a lifetime. Take in every minute. They__l be over soon enough, and you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Honestly, I had no idea how to respond. My senior year of college I__ taken a seminar titled Public Education: Situations and Strategies. I thought about emailing my professor, maybe suggest some new topics and help him get current. Maybe he__ invite me back as a guest lecturer. He__ probably expect some strategies along with the situations though, so I guess that wouldn__ work, but whatever.

This is my worst fear. It__ not keeping my students safe from terrorists, it__ knowing what to do when the Chaplain comes to take Johnny out of class because not letting the terrorists win means sometimes the good guys are going to die. And those good guys have kids, and they__e sitting in my classroom.

DPRK translates to Democratic People__ Republic of Korea__nd if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, it__ oxymoronic because the Korea we__e talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the pastor__ father was their guest, what I really meant is he was shot down, captured, tortured, and held prisoner by a depraved enemy in what today can only be described as a failed state.

It__ hard to describe being an expatriate of sorts to people who__e never lived overseas, but when you__e an American living in a geographically separated region within a country like Korea, you form bonds with people who you__ never associate with stateside.

The service members who defend our way of life ask very little in return, but they deserve teachers who will be as relentless in teaching their children as the military is in protecting our interests at home and abroad.

The men and women who made up DoDDS Korea during the time I was there were an eclectic group to say the least, but as a group we were among the most talented, diverse, intelligent, fun, crazy, thoughtful, caring, and dedicated people in the world. We did important work, and we did it well. Better than that, we did it exceptionally well. We were experts in our fields, and we made each other better still because we depended on each other in ways that people who__e never lived overseas could ever imagine.

The meeting began well, meaning it had the potential for being short.

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I__ all for that, except my kids won__ ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won__ go downstairs on their shift__o I__e got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16__ut hell yes, I__ all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I__ on board with that, except I__e got these kids who stay home now, because they__e scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn__ enough, so there__ a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case.

The look of a smug teacher is priceless.

I have this thought, it__ horrible, and it makes me sick, but it__ true: one day these students will grow up and have their own kids, and they__e going to name them for men and women who will die in this war.

In my life I__e been very lucky to travel around the world and see students and teachers in nearly two dozen countries__ut the most awe-inspiring experience I__e ever had was two years after 9/11 when I had the chance to attend a conference in Manhattan and personally meet many of the heroic teachers who persevered under conditions that in our worst nightmares we could never have imagined. In my opinion there__ not been nearly enough written about those teachers, and I hope that changes soon.

We all lose people. We all have to live in the aftermath. It__ how we move forward that counts, but sometimes we are tethered to something in our past that won__ let us move forward.

In Korea I__ been so afraid that Sami would lose her dad. She did, but she didn__ get a flag. He went to Doha, then to Baghdad, then to Kabul, then to someplace else, and then to a different someplace else, on and on. He__ come home, leave again, come home, leave again, until one day he came home a different person altogether. Sami lost Angel, lost her family, and then she lost herself.