For Veterans’ Day, here’s a Denver Post piece detailing a young man’s struggles with the military and his own life as a reporter and photographer followed him for 27 months during basic training, advanced infantry training, and a tour in Iraq. It’s really spectacularly done, and the photography is revealing and often heartbreaking.
What struck me most, however, was the stark impression (accurate or not) that it gave me of lower-class America. The Fisher family doesn’t seem to be poor (Ian has a nice phone and a car of his own), but certain characteristics stand out: a long family history of military service (not something seen among the middle, and certainly not the upper classes), divorce, and a certain “live for the moment” approach to the decisions made by young adults. [SPOILER ALERT!] Ian was engaged three times, finally marrying a girl he had dated a bit in high school but grew close to, over email, while he was overseas. While in the Army, he developed problems with drugs. He went temporarily AWOL at least twice. All these spur-of-the-moment decisions, eventually resulting in loss of rank and pay, although eventually he seems to get his military career solidly on-track.
I’m not going to say all my decisions, even the ones made after careful reflection and counsel, ended up well; frankly, I had no business going to college at the age of 18 (and probably should have joined the Marines), since I spent 5 years skating through to a bachelor’s degree, switching majors and schools in the middle. But I can’t imagine proposing marriage to someone I’d only been dating for a few months. Ian’s decision-making seems to rely on a very optimistic view of the world: He knows he’s only been dating a girl for two months, but believes that she is The One. Even if he’s had the same feeling twice before and it didn’t work out.
Both Devin and Ian moved ahead undeterred by their parents’ divorces, their own quick decision or their youth.
“We have statistics and odds against us right now,” Ian acknowledged. “I hate statistics. Who has the right to say we won’t make it?”
It’s not that anyone has or lacks the right. It’s that ignoring past history is a surefire way to repeat it.
It’s almost as if Ian, subconsciously, counts on luck and rarely gets it. Folks with greater advantages have a great deal of luck (by birthright, mostly), and yet learn never to count on it. (I’ll be the first to say I’ve been luckier than any fellow deserves to be, given my propensity towards laziness.) Growing up, I expected that I’d go to college, get a job, and start a family. It wasn’t that other people expected this, it was that I saw the results of doing these things: a nice home, and a pleasant existence. Ian didn’t have the benefit of married parents as he grew up, so he has little experience with what marriage is. He knows that it’s desirable, but doesn’t know what it means: love, obviously, but also a shared commitment to values. Being in love Is Not Enough, if you don’t have basic agreement on topics such as household spending and child-rearing, things that are hard to discern after only a few months of dating. Also important is an understanding of each other’s requirements for romance and sex, things that change over a long period of time.
