A Memorial Day We Won't Forget

Today's American holiday is generally called "Memorial Day," but for Daniel a better name might be "Army-Guy Day," and I can tell you it is one high holiday on his six-year-old-boy calendar.

One has to remember Daniel's story.  Last night, at a beach-side tourist-central candy store in Maine, Amy found the very perfect candy for Daniel:  Gummy Army Guys.  Yes, candy with the same ingredients, look, feel, and chewability of gummy bears, only larger, taller, and in the shape of "Army Guys."  Green - the color of classic late-twentieth-century plastic toy soldiers, reminiscent of the South Pacific theater of World War II, or perhaps Vietnam.  As we drove home, he analyzed the chewable army guys as he ate them.  He even gave me one, since he loves his Daddy very much.

Our town has a short parade and a subsequent memorial ceremony on the town green - we're Olde New Englandy enough to have a green - and Daniel, Madeleine and I attended, with bells on, as the saying goes.  Amy had told Daniel that the soldiers shoot guns and the children scramble to pick up the bullets, so that lofty moment was the focus of much of our mental rehearsal on the way to the center of town.  An older military-looking lady in a white uniform handed each of the children pretty big-sized American flags (bigger than the one I got - and subsequently gave, appropriately, to Daniel after Ron Paul's primary-night celebration in our town).  Of course, both children brandished the flag quite enthusiastically, and Madeleine tried to plant hers in the ground, like the ones surrounding a small monument on the green.  Daniel climbed, and proudly sat astride, a World War I cannon on the green - our green has one gigantic war memorial.

As the "army guys" of various ages passed, and then the high school, middle school and elementary school [sic] bands, and then various collections of enthusiasts, one man among the bystandars, walking by, said to me about Young Daniel, "He looks happy."  I think blissful would be a better word for the look on the lad's face as all of our town's officialdom went past us, with much band music in the background, on this most soldierly of holidays.

And yes, the Army Guys shot their guns, in a formal salute to the fallen soldiers, but we didn't see any bullet-seeking boys scrambling.  I stayed in one place with Madeleine during the ceremony,  but Daniel had free run of the green.  He spent much time up on the auditorium stage, which was not being used, but he also made his rounds.  He came back for awhile, just as the ceremonial gunshot salutes were about to be issued - to Madeleine's shock and Daniel's awe - and right around Taps-time, he was wondering where the bullets were.  I told him I didn't know of any, so he disappeared in the direction of a panel of armed Army Guys.  At the end of the ceremony, he came back to join us, and proudly showed us two discharged bullets.  It turned out,  he asked one of the Army Guys about bullets, and that Army Guy gave them to him.

This new acquisition goes into the inventory of Most Important Possessions accumulated over the past six-and-a-half years, more or less in parallel with the "U.S. Army" velcro label that a National Guardsman gave Daniel, in a bout of spontaneous graciousness, at a Chinese buffet about  a year and a half ago - the day that our lunch was transformed and transfixed by a table of men in fatigues and food became irrelevant.

Daniel asked me to take a picture of him pretending to hurl his bullets into the cowering world before him.  He also wanted an immediate explanation as to how they "work", to put it euphemistically.  On the way back to the mini-van, Daniel was admiring his bullets and asking more questions, so I told him I thought they had a bit of  "poison" (he wouldn't recognize "lead").  This gave the new collectibles a wondrous touch of intimidation.  He wanted to know all about the poison.  Was it safe for him to be holding them?  Yes, but don't lick them or put them in your mouth.     [Most children don't need to be told this, but Daniel is atypical...]  More questions about poison, and how to avoid it.

As we got into the car, Daniel was commenting on how Ian would be sorry he didn't join as and, something like, "that just goes to show you can't judge something by how it looks or what it sounds like."

Finally, he got tired of holding them, and stored them in my front-left pocket for safe keeping. When we got back to the house, just as we got to the front door, he stopped me cold on the porch, and scrambled to retrieve the bullets from my pocket.  It wouldn't be right to go back into the house, approaching Mommy and Ian, without the bullets literally in hand.

But within a few minutes,  he had a concrete concern about the poison in the bullets:

"If I put my finger in my nose and I've touched it, can it poison me?"

No, the Army Guy would never have given a six-year-old boy a bullet if it posed a danger to little fingers that sometimes end up in nostrils.

(May 28, 2012)