As usual...BUT made a slight change

As is the Moon Rabbit's well known routine, I rise early and grope my way blindly to the coffee pot, swearing and grumbling as I trip over doggy toys in the floor in the dark, after deftly tripping the switch for the pot I lean back with a satisfied sigh and wait for: One-My heart to begin lub-dubbing in my chest and Two-For that frantically craved brew of Rich Colombian Coffee from Folgers.

I had made plans the night before to write an article pointedly ridiculing the forty four pound cat found terrorizing Weight Watchers International in New Joisey. So, being the concientious journalist I am, I went and typed my little fingers to the bone on that article, but deviating from my normal course of actions afterward, I slipped out on to the back deck with my coffee and settled into a well padded chair and waited for the sun to come up.

The early morning hours are mine and not for sharing, it allows me to think quite undisturbed and it also allows me to listen to my little corner of the world begin the process of waking up. But as the light began to get ever so slowly lighter, I watched the fog roll in and where we live is pretty much isolated and like a thunderbolt I was hammered with the realization that the forest behind the house held a chilling resemblance to the jungles of South VietNam, true it was an optical illusion and I believed that I had left that behind me over forty years ago. Boy, was I ever wrong.

My senses came to full alert and I moved quietly on stealthy feet as I traversed the short area from one end of the deck to the other, fully expecting small arms fire to erupt from the tree line.

For short moments in time, I was plunged backwards in time to a period of turmoil in my life and in this country. I spent a total of seventy two months, nineteen days, fourteen hours in country of South East Asia. Thirty four months, four days of that I was an unwilling guest of the Heroic Peoples Liberation Army of North Viet Nam and I was NOT by any stretch of the imagination a model prisoner. As a matter of fact I have no idea why they did NOT execute my young, incorrigble ass because I was such a pain in theirs.

But, gentle reader that is ANOTHER story for much, much later...

The rest of the time, I was a combat Marine and I did my job, which was killing the enemy, quite efficiently. Yes, I earned several medals and citations, well...bully for me...LOL!

But those medals and citations and a buck and a quarter will buy me a cup of coffee.

For those short moments this morning I was transported to a time that was filled with chaos, small arms fire, the thunder of jets and the rumbling of helicopter and the cries of the wounded and the silence of the dead. These are sounds that will forever be in my head, and yes, I am ashamed, for the lives I caused to be lost and for those that I took directly and for those lives I could not save.

Now, comes the supreme effort of cramming all of that garbage that fell out of THAT closet I had it packed so neatly in and slamming the door and locking it securely so that it never opens again.

This glimpse of my personal and very private life may offend some, well...bully for you. Bottom line here is, I went and did MY JOB while others fled their duty to their country that raised them, fed them, nurtured them and allowed them their freedoms.

I'll be sixty years old this month...BULLY FOR ME!...There were times when I did not believe that I would see thirty, I've weathered a war, a divorce, another ongoing marraige, my mother in law, my grandchildren, cancer(YEA! I'M A SURVIVOR), two tornados, one big, bad ass hurricane and broken shoulders, broken legs and a totally unrelated eighty foot fall from a cell tower.

My darling bride of twenty seven years swears that when I die, somebody will have to tell me I'm dead, because I won't lay down. But...today, was a time I believed that I had died in the rice paddies of South VietNam and somebody forgot to tell me, or maybe part of my humanity died there and I have failed to regain it. Either way, I'm still HERE, you got a problem with that? ROFLMAO!

Keep checking back, read my blogs and laugh at my silliness and twisted, skewed points of view on the world at large and commiserate with me when you come across a blog such as this...