Karl Klockars

I was getting internally geared up for a fiery grill and some beers this weekend, in “celebration” of Memorial Day.  This is until sickness kept us inside on Monday, the skies were grey and boring, and I started to do some thinking about the use of the term “celebration” versus “observation” in terms of the big summer kickoff holiday.

The weather was actually pretty appropriate – grey skies, rainy, damp, humid, temperate – and matched my internal barometer.  I wasn’t really in a mood to be a party-down-bro kinda guy and was glad when the command decision was made to stay in, relax, hide from the world and maybe have a steak via cast iron skillet.  Not charcoal?  I know – completely unAmerican, pinko, commie, etc.  I did have a 6′er of PBR, though.  So that should get back my AmeriCard in some way.

The down feeling of what has come to be a Van-Halen soundtracked Summer Extravanganza was tempered by some thoughts of people dressed in heavy clothing carrying heavy things in a very hot, sandy place.  I don’t very often go all USA-USA-USA and anything that’s organized too excessively makes me want to leave immediately, but I did spend some time thinking about the things that make Memorial Day a Memorial.  Not getting shitfaced on a porch.

Why this year?  Why this line of thinking?  It starts in a Boy Scout Troop somewhere around 1994.  I was the Senior Patrol Leader (see also:  Lord of the Dorks) of the scout troop, which is basically King Nerd of the camping scene.  I was the boss of about 30-40 kids save for the adult leadership, and I was elected a couple two-tree times to lead the troop.  Basically that’s a vote that says “we like you and you seem to have your shit together, so here’s a patch.”

And under my command control emperor’s rule reign whatever was a new stream of 5th graders every September or so.  I was about 15 or 16, driving the family truckster to Scout meetings everyTuesday rocking a ponytail with my khaki patched up shirt and thinking that I was minorly cool.  I at least had a little command and some kids looked up to me.

One of those kids was a goofy little shit named Robby.  I recall him having a big head and a bad haircut.  That could pretty much describe all of us at that point, however, so ascribe the same attributes to me as well.  He was skinny, he was kinda spastic but he was mostly a pretty good kid.

If recollection serves, he was one of those kids that was always willing to help out, ready to volunteer and hang out with the bigger guys.  I don’t know if that was more of an aspect of wanting to fit in and be older, or if it was also part of just being helpful and friendly and courteous and kind and all of that Boy Scout oath jazz.

But he was an allright guy.  I didn’t really spend a lot of time with the younger kids, as a rule – I was too busy smoking cigarettes and listening to Alice in Chains tapes to try to offset the general dorkiness inherent in Scout stuff.  I got my Eagle badge and drifted away from everything, and lost track of pretty much everyone.

This is until a few months ago, when my mom asked “Do you remember Robby Miller?  From Boy Scouts?”  I thought for a second, and said Yeah, I did.  “He was killed in Afghanistan this week.”

It’s been odd looking at articles and trying to make peace in my head of the pictures I remember of the kid, and the photos that ran in the paper and online.  Trying to figure out where Robby stopped being a little 2nd Class scout and started being a soldier.  Started being a goddamn Green Beret and Special Forces.  That Robby?  Seriously?  Whoa.

And I wondered if part of that Scout experience, starting in a church annex at 7:30 every Tuesday, planted the seed of wanting to put on a uniform, train, work, obey, fight, and die for his country.  If starting with olive shorts and khaki shirts ended up with desert camo, an M16 or some other kind of weaponry and staring down the sights at the Taliban in some god forsaken spit of land.

Everything I read seemed to be the same Robby I remember.  Helpful.  Volunteering.  Ready to lend a hand.  I couldn’t figure out how that kid became the man in the photos, the one riding the horse with a full scraggly beard and a distinguished military career.  Same kid, though.

There’s no real point to this story, no political lesson or anti- or pro- war rhetoric.  I can’t sit here and spend another thousand words railing against military action in the middle east, nor do I care to.  That’s been said a thousand times over, by better and smarter people than myself.  It was just a grey, cold day in May that fit my mindset in a more personalized year.

Everyone always said that knowing someone who served and fell changes how you feel about things.  I don’t even really claim to know Robby.  But I remembered him yesterday.  I remembered a kid I knew once.  A kid that had grown up around here and then died thousands of miles away, for reasons that I can’t understand.  And that’s really all I could do.