Shit Falling From the Sky

The Yahoo chat window opened unexpectedly last night, and Tommi wrote, “I have a surprise for you! Hang on. Are you at home? One of my buddies is lending me his satellite phone to call you. We’ll have to keep it short: I don’t want to use all his minutes. Which number should I use?” And we settled the details, and I plugged in the headset and stared at the phone. No ring. I distracted myself with reading (or tried) and stole glances at the phone. It was still there. No ring. Thirty minutes passed. I went back to my reading in earnest. An hour more and I hear the Yahoo “buzz” signaling me for attention. Tommi again.

Sorry. We took rockets again. Not the time to stand in the middle of the parking lot for a satellite connection. All kinds of shit falling from the sky.

Now, it should have been a sober moment, but maybe I’ve just had too many sober moments lately. I started to laugh. With voice enabled Tommi could hear, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. “Shit falling from the sky,” I stuttered, “Oh, God, yes. Take cover. Shit? Shit falling from the sky? God, no. Don’t stay in the parking lot for that! The stench!” And she started to laugh … at me? at the moment? It didn’t matter. More and more laughing … long laughter … carried home on laughter to kitchen talks and the sense of a certain tomorrow for just a moment ... or two.

Reading news from the Times this morning, I noticed this story about a soldier named Pat Tillman. He was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan last year. His story catches attention because (and maybe I should have known this, but I didn’t) he was an NFL player for the Arizona Cardinals who left a promising career in football to enlist, along with his brother Kevin, in the U.S. Army. Without question his death was a tragic loss, but what captured my attention in the story was this one line: “Four months before he was killed in Afghanistan, Pat Tillman was told that he could opt out of extending his military service because National Football League clubs were clamoring for him.” Because Pat Tillman turned down the offer, he didn’t come home.

I regret the loss of any life to a war I believe dishonorably engaged, especially the lives of those so certainly destined to make great contributions to the strength and well being of American identity and ingenuity. But Pat Tillman is not alone in that count! At the time of this writing, 1,557 men and women – each one an American citizen and each one a great asset to the treasure house of this nation – have been lost, killed in the madness of a war against terror where the terror turned on them. Nearly 6,000 have come home wounded. Do I think Pat Tillman should have saved himself by accepting an offer unjustly given? No. He did the right thing. Tommi is doing the right thing, too. She won’t leave “her soldiers” behind. It’s a hellava dilemma when to do the right thing can cost so many lives for all the wrong reasons.

There’s shit falling from the sky every single day in Iraq. “Thank God their aim is bad,” Tommi will say, and it gets me to thinking: If the “clamor” of an NFL football league could raise enough noise to create choice for a single player to come home, there’s hope. The line defining “right” can be moved, but it's apt to take ahellava lot of noise!