an ode to boy

Ah, The Boy.

The Boy is our cousin, who was effectively raised alongside the Dead FlyBoys. Within a few weeks' time, The Boy will be in Iraq, give or take a political upheaval (pray... if Curious George can do what he does while the Senate is out... may he'll take his own vacation soon) in the next day or so. He's just grown up so fast! *sniff* I remember when...

(tripped out transition screen for a flashback)

The Boy grew up looking like Sloth from "The Goonies," and we let him know every chance we could. He was tormented in such a way that his scars-for-life resemble a full-body radiation burn victim. Many times, with no small contribution from our end, has he nearly died because we thought it might be funny to inebriate him, then convince him to do something stupid. That time he was chasing spent butts off a cliff is a keeper in my scrapbook, but my beotch brother cradles a memory of far more dastardly consequence which involved a romp in Illinois' Garden of the Gods and the ingestion of a strange fungus.

In grade school, I used to beat The Boy with, well, anything that was durable. An old friend of ours, who is admittedly in-your-face, made a habit of holding him by his ankles and literally shaking him for taco money. We are all so much to blame for collectively influencing his tortured life that we shall surely pay in our afterlives, if not by some karma in this one.

Then The Boy graduated college, and we cried. *sniff* It was almost as endearing as when we found out that he was dating girls, having shed the "Sloth" demeanor with the help of braces and, like Mark Hamill between "Empire" and "Jedi", surely had some kind of vehicular accident that managed to ultimately improve his image. So The Boy ended up with a degree, and nothing to do with it. He pondered and pondered and scratched his previously Sloth-like head and thought, What am I to do? One can only imagine the Dr. Zeuss imagery that went through his bruised and beaten mind...

The Boy looked at his life, one wouldn't know why,
Having spent a small fortune to Lazik each eye
And it could be his headband was screwed on too tight
Or maybe an urge from Republicans to fight,
But somewhere inside him, somewhere with no brain,
Was a drive (maybe drugs) for stupidity again

And then he heard something
That started quite low......
And it built up quite slow.....
But it started to GROW!

He heard a recruiter, and I wouldn't lie
The man was quite shiny, like a coin with a tie
And Boy was enticed, and never asked why
But signed all the papers that pay you to die!
(One weekend a month, two weeks out of the year. Be, all that you can be.)


And so, our little The Boy grew up and out of our bubble of torment, and with a degree decided that the only life for him was in protecting oil. A note on his degree: it gave him status in Military Intelligence (eh?), but his new duty is to shoot people from atop a poorly armored humvee. Gets paid more, though.

Now, it wouldn't be appropriate for us to torment our little hero while he goes off to war, but darn it, we just can't help it.

There's a pool on how he eats it: Friendly, or unfriendly fire? And what creative body part will absorb the shrapnel?

We love you The Boy. Good luck in Iraq. Remember, never bend over in front of your buddies during target practice. Actually, do. I have a lot of money on that.

You be safe now.

dfb