A classmate had a pal, they were like
twins, always together all the time, so much so some cats thought they were
gay. They came from the same hood, their families didn’t have much money, their grades weren’t so hot either, and they had no chance of even getting into a community college. One day Ken says to his pal,
“Hey James let’s go ina Ahmy, man.”
“Ummmm, yea man…like ina buddy system, uh?”
“Yea like dat!”
“Yea, we cuds mebbe loin sompen, man.”
“Cool!”
They didn’t even wait for the dog and pony
show, they went to the recruiter, and signed up. Well, Ken had flat feet, and
when they went through the process down at Whitehall, he was rejected, and sent home. A few days later I ran into James, and
“Hey man, I thought you an ya bwa wuz ina
Ahmy, man?”
“They don tol me I had flat feet, an shit,
man. They kicked my ass out befo I even got in, man. James was crying, man. I
shook my haid, twied ta splain an shit, but they wouldn’t even lissenname, man.”
“No shit?”
“No shit?”
“Yea, man it be like det sometimes!”
“Guess so!”
James wound up in the paratroopers, and
spent eighteen months in Nam. He was blessed, he was one of the lucky ones to
come back all in one piece, with all of his attachments in good, healthy
working order. Kenny on the other hand was lost to heroin, and became a junky.
There weren’t any jobs, we had three choices: school, a job or the military. Since there weren't any jobs, or scholarships, a lot of us went to work for Uncle Sam.
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