Life is Odd, is it Not?

When I think back to my younger, more idealistic, years I wonder if I could have been caught up in some kind of movement or revolutionary group? I did, after all, have the urge to "belong" in those days... like so many of my peers.

And I did enlist in Uncle Sam's Navy. But that was not so I could go kill the enemy (the Vietnam War just starting up and all), I was more pacifistic at the time. I just wanted to go to sea, visit exotic ports, and do it on someone else's dime since I did not have many dimes of my own. And we had the Draft at the time which was ramping up big time. I had no desire to slog through mud and jungle and sleep on the ground. I figured the Navy would provide me with decent food and reasonably comfy sleeping quarters and I was right.

I suppose I was never radical fodder. Too much of a cynic, too wary of being used in any way. But I had friends who were more gullible and I often wonder what happened to them. I also had friends who might have sucked in the gullible, they being glib and clever and all. I also wonder what happened to them. I assume nothing too outrageous since I never saw any news reports about them, not that I paid much attention to the news in my early twenties. So they could have simply escaped my notice.

Like the younger Boston Bomber, I had an older brother. By the time I enlisted, though, I wasn't very impressed by him. Maybe if he hadn't stolen my socks and underwear so often or embarrased me in front of my friends regularly or any of the other mean tricks he played on me, I would have been more impressed. But, no, by the time I was 19, I had pegged him as a total jerk and not worth emulating.

You see, my theory is that the younger brother idolized the elder and followed his lead. And that this is what led him to participate in that atrocity in Boston last week and has destroyed his life as well as his victim's lives.

Sad. Truly sad.