The Paper Chase: Things to be Thankful For And The Sergeant's List

So I was going through all of the paper floating around our house today--paper that our children create on and with in their various activities throughout the day.  Not just school related, it was found falling out of backpacks, stacked on desks and chairs, under beds and yes, even (and already) in the bathroom on the floor by the toilet.

At first, it was just a regular chore, me the memory keeper sorting through what goes in the trash, what each child might want to keep and what I might want to put in their memory trunks for later, you know, when they are grown ups and I want to embarrass them.  However, about half-way through I found myself sitting in the craft/music/sports room reading through some of these--some making me laugh, others making me cringe and some just plain old confusing me as I couldn't 'see' the child that created the thing I was looking at...it wasn't a child I was acquainted with obviously.  Even if it was my kid.

First, I'm happy to see in the "Things I like About"  booklet by my daughters classmates that all of them find her funny and amusing.  A few of them even find her awesome, wierd, nice and terrific.  I agree with all of that (although the spelling was changed to for the sake of her second grade friends) and I 'm happy to see all of these great descriptors.  However, I was most impressed by two of the children who said that she is a 'good friend".  These are not children that my daughter mentions much or has play dates with and I only knew them from the class list or the mentions on the class blog.  So when I asked my daughter about it, she just said that some of her classmates aren't that nice to these two kids and she "kinda takes care of them' sometimes. I asked her to tell me more about this and, with a good amount of impatience, she just said, "I make sure that no one is putting rocks in their shoes at recess, and that they don't get pushed out of line."

Rocks and recess lines...I remember when making and being a good friend was just that easy and without getting to sappy, I told her she was a good kid and that I was proud of her and gave her a hug.  "Whatever, Mom.  Are you sure you didn't take too many of your headache pills today?"  And......scene.

Not that she knows it, but she somewhat redeemed herself later when I read her "Things I am Thankful For" list, because it was pure "her"...sweet, funny and a little wierd.  And here it is:

1.  Food
2.  Making Food
3.  Uncle Charlie

4.  Air

5.  Mom and Dad
6.  Teachers
7.  Brother
8.  Cousins
9. Hearts
10. Life

And in her own "Spinal Tap" moment, she added her own number 11.  More Food

I'm just glad I made the list and I've used logic to be okay with the fact that we came after "air".

Later, I came across an oddly important looking document entitled, "Sargents Test" (sic).  It was obvious from the writing that my daughter had written the questions and my son had answered them, part of some game they had been playing in the park earlier.  According to the document, he passed his "Sargents" test, although the "tester" told the "testee" that he still needed to come up with a better "Sargent" nickname.  But I'll get to that later.

Page one of the test was the stuff that threw me--although I don't really know why.  Boys, even boys like ours who have not grown up around guns, and who aren't allowed to watch movies like "Kill Bill" even though their friends get to, play their version of soldier, cowboy, lawman, etc.  It just blew me away that either of them knew enough to ask and answer questions about "flanking maneuvers" or that the 'stock' is the main body part of a gun.

I was happy to see that he had only 'killed' 4 men and that he'd left (or kept...it wasn't that clear) 69 men alive.  That made me happy and hopefull...hopefull that he could see the 'human' factor of a war and not just the 'cool stuff' like guns and flanking maneuvers. Happy in that he might have actually listed to some of the talks we've had when we thought the 'war' stuff was getting a bit too intense.

We've seen him grow into a solid historian about WW II. He's read "Band of Brothers", "Diary of Anne Frank" and about a million other fiction and non-fiction books about WW II.  He has looked up his Grandfather, Rear Admiral Charles Beasley who was in the Pacific theater of the war on a destroyer and he idolizes my father, Lt.Commander John Huey, a fighter pilot off carriers through 1968.  And, because it's who we are, and because we want him to be able to understand and discuss war and soldiers on a different level,  my husband and I make sure to talk to our kids about the wars they've grown up with--the why's and how's of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and especially the human factor of the war in terms of our troops and their families, as well as the civilians who are living through all of this on the other side of the world.

I knew all of this, had participated in all of it, but I don't think I knew what it meant to him, or rather what it meant to his character. And I'm not sure I do now.  But I'm going with the fact that "men killed to alive" ratio was 4 to 69...that my sweet boy values life even at this pretend level. This is something we'll keep talking with him about--that both as a budding historian and a boy who plays war in the park, it's easy to read about shooting and killing and it's easy to play at it, but he can never forget that it all comes down in the end to two things...his understanding of the value of humanity and the choices he makes about that value as he continues to build his character..

On another note, I have to agree with my daughter (the "tester") about his choice of nicknames:  Fish Eye and Dead Claw just don't have any, well, meaning or panache.  He'll have to work on that as well.