FIT Freshman Essay Contest First Place Award, 2018
The United States Military, which consists of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, outnumbers every other nation’s army in spending power and mechanical strength. As of 2018, the proposed budget for the United States military is $639.1 billion. That is $400 billion more than China, the largest standing army in the world, consisting of approximately 2,183,000 personnel, or 0.18% of China’s population. The United States military, which has been completely volunteer since July 1st, 1973, consists of approximately 1,347,000 active duty personnel, or 0.4% of the United States’ population. In order to join the army, the prospective volunteer must be a U.S. citizen or green card holder, be in good health, have a high school diploma, and be at least 17 years of age. An individual can join the military before they can legally vote, donate blood, work full time, and drive late at night. At the age of 18, an individual can legally own a gun, purchase tobacco products, and develop a will. July 18th, 2016, my cousin left for the army at the age of 17.
The drive to Belmont New Hampshire from Poughkeepsie New York takes about five hours. July 15th, 2016, we drive up towards Albany, then make a sharp right into Massachusetts where on most turnpikes people reach speeds of 90 miles per hour on non-holiday weekdays when cops don’t hide in bushes. However, it’s vacation season in July so we witness three cars get pulled over. My mom encourages me to drive, but I have both fear and my permit, so I choose not to. My best friend Emma and my brother Evan sit in the back seat. We pass Manchester, where my cousin Andy will leave from the Manchester- Boston Regional Airport to Fort Benning, Georgia. We drive through Concord, the capital of New Hampshire and the only place in New Hampshire that vaguely resembles a city. If the United States Military were a city, it would be the tenth most populated city in the U.S. That summer, the population of Belmont New Hampshire was 7,275 people, but it felt more like 10. When we drive down the road to my aunt’s house, my stomach jumps up and down in slow motion. On the same road, we pass an elk farm, one of the few remaining Shaker villages, a smokehouse, and small houses separated by forests. We pull into my aunt’s gravel driveway, are welcomed by a dog, a cat, chickens, and my younger cousin Masie. We will all be sleeping in her room.
“Masie, why does your room smell like a hamster cage?”
She recently started stashing snacks in her room.
“Haha!” She laughs, “check these out!” Then she proceeds to crunch on uncooked Chinese noodles.
Around midnight, Masie acts out a story to us. Squirming and giggling on the floor she coughs out “And we called 9-1-1, we’re like, HER VAGINAS BLEEDING, cause we thought she sat on a－”
“Shhhhh,” my aunt comes in. We have to go to bed. I look at her wall and see the same picture that hangs in my room. During the most recent family reunion the cousins took a photo looking down at my camera. All of us, Connor, Andy, Rory, Masie, Evan, Nora and I looked down chuckling and elbowing as Rory pressed his toe to the phone screen and snapped the picture. The rest of our extended family said their goodbyes to Andy that day. He was dressed in a button down, but by lunch he had already managed to make a mess of himself and had to borrow a shirt Evan won at his orthodontist visit. In every picture, Andy smiles wide wearing a shirt that says “BRACE YOUR FACE.” He never had braces, but he received the good half of our genes. While looking at this picture, someone turns out the lights, then we fall asleep.
July 16th, the next morning, Andy comes home from camping with his friends. My mom gets excited, Andy is suddenly the favorite child. He’s a full grown boy, who puts ketchup on his eggs, impresses my dad with a spot on Chewbacca impersonation, and enlists in the army. Sometimes he calls me Indie May. Andy’s middle name is Ben, after our grandpa. My middle name is May, after our late grandma, whose initials and passing date Andy will later get tattooed on a cross on his arm. Along with a tattoo that states “family first,” despite the fact that he asked no one in his family first.
Later that day our other cousins arrive. Throughout 2016, flipping a nearly empty plastic water bottle is a viral challenge. The neck of the bottle is held by the tips of your fingers, the wrist gently flicks, and, hopefully, the bottle lands upright. If the bottle does happen to stand straight post-departure, a large number of young individuals fluent in internet culture will begin to scream. We spend a good half hour flipping bottles until my brother Evan miraculously flips his onto the 10 ft high porch swing beam. We got it on video. Everyone instantly screamed. This is a common pass time between us. One summer on a trip to the outer banks, we all spent an hour trying to shoot a basketball into the hoop from a deck three stories up until my brother walked by and then shot it in on the first try. We got it on video. Everyone instantly screamed.
July 17th, Andy’s best friend Reuben takes us out on a boat. Lake Winnisquam, meaning “peaceful waters,” was once home to the Abenaki people 300 years ago. They endured three wars, were urged to fight by Europeans, were slaughtered by other Europeans and are still struggling to become a federally recognized people by the state of New Hampshire due to politicians’ fear of possible land claims conflicting with land now owned by European Americans. Today on peaceful waters, Andy wears U.S. flag swim shorts and fashions his forehead with a matching bandanna. Andy, has always been comfortable walking around half naked. Meanwhile I’m consistently introverted and it’s the first summer I feel comfortable enough to wear a bikini top. Emma and Nora flop up and down hanging onto a tube. I take pictures of Connor’s new windblown hairstyle. Evan, Masie and Rory chow down a bag of barbecue chips. Andy attaches a wake board to the boat and stands up almost effortlessly as Reuben increases our speed. Several years before, Andy and Reuben convinced me to try wake boarding, and just as I mustered the leg strength to stand atop the rushing water, the old fraying rope snapped. I was left in the middle of the lake as they untangled the rope from the small speedboat. Alone, I tried not to let my mind wander to whatever could swallow me in the 170 ft deep lake. Today, I cannot muster the mental strength to try again.
When we return to my aunt’s house, we assemble a game of Risk on the porch. Risk is a strategy board game in which two to six players act as armies attempting to conquer forty two territories that make up the Earth’s geological map among six continents. Twelve cousins and friends want to play, so we play as six teams of two. Emma is outgoing and friendly. I am calculated and reserved. We make a good team. Emma tells me she loves Australia and we have to claim it. After several hours and a dinner break, the last two teams on the board are Rory and Reuben, and Emma and I. By building up armies on the four territories that make up the continent of Australia, which can only be entered through one other territory in Asia, I eventually challenge the entire continent of Asia and take over every territory on the east side of the board. I leave a single army in each territory and steeply increase the defense on all borders. I receive a large quantity of armies; benefit of owning specific cards and territories that I saved. I conquer the board. Evan always wins Munchkin, Masie always wins Just Dance, Andy always wins monopoly, but I will always win Risk.
In the midst of my glory, I think. Risk is a game of war. Over this game of war we laugh, we hold grudges, and we spill raspberry Snapple iced teas. Specifically raspberry Snapple Iced teas. We always hit the bottom of the glass raspberry Snapple iced tea bottles to shake up the sediment. We let the pop of the raspberry Snapple iced tea cap echo off the high ceiling. We freeze our feet on the tile floor so the raspberry Snapple iced teas stay chill. We sigh as we finish that long satisfying sip of raspberry Snapple iced tea. I taste raspberry Snapple iced teas. Do people still sip iced tea in war? Will it ever be Snapple? Will it ever be Andy?
The night of July 17th, 2016, is Andy’s last night asleep in his own bed before joining the army. His best friend Reuben sleeps on the floor. I sleep in the bed. We all stare at the ceiling. Reuben fights the realization that his best friend since childhood will not be around for the last summer before college. Reuben will be buying dorm room essentials to ship to the University of Tampa. Andy will be in boot camp at Fort Benning, Georgia, crawling through mud under barbed wire, running through a gas chamber to find a gas mask, and learning to assemble guns. Reuben eventually falls asleep.
“I’m not ready to grow up,” I whisper, still staring at the ceiling. “Everything is moving too fast for me. I feel behind all the time. And if I can’t grow up now, will I ever grow up? And here we are anyways, growing up, growing apart.”
Andy pulls me over, “we’re not going to grow apart. We’ll all keep in touch. I’m only a phone call away. We can write to each other until boot camp ends.”
We whisper and I cry. He says “it’s okay.” In the back of my mind I know it is okay. But it is a turning point in life in which I will spend the next year and a half silently depressed; guiltily because I know I have no real right to feel it. I will never outright state this to anyone. The one person who will listen without intruding, comfort within a range I am comfortable with,remain at a reachable distance; this one person is leaving. And we are programmed by this country to say that he is doing a very brave and noble thing, but I constantly struggle to believe that Andy decided to serve our country for any other reason than that he did not know what else to do beyond football and high school. I can give credit to the fact that he has the emotional strength to only ever see his family between periods of longer than six months, and to maintain a facade of courageousness, accepting the thanks for his service. But when I lay down in the dark and leave my thoughts to take in the final moment, I feel that his arms might be strong and his whimpers silent, but his chest shakes unevenly and his face dampens. In the dark, he cries, too.
These things will never be acknowledged by any of us in spoken words, because we are a normal, Snapple drinking, bottle flipping family. But we won’t say these things, because some struggles, if not all struggles, are not meant to be shared. We highlight successes. And so I’ll continue to highlight successes, but I’ll struggle to do the smallest of things like a normal person, until I decide what I’m doing is stupid and I’ll meet with Dr. Kim Ellison to realize, like Andy, I actually have been growing up. Perhaps even a little too quickly.
On Thursday September 27th, 2018, I will be finishing dinner at a diner on Long Island with my boyfriend. At 6:55 pm, I will finish washing my hands and receive a call. I will answer the phone, walk out of the diner and towards the car. Andy will be in Florida heading towards the airport to catch a flight to Kuwait. I’ll remain on the call while I shut the door and buckle my seat belt.
I’ll say “I called the other day but we have very different schedules. But we can still talk now.”
Andy will say “Yeah that’s ok. Sorry I couldn’t pick up. I gotta catch my flight really soon.”
“Oh. Can we call when you’re there?”
“My phone service isn’t international. But we can facetime.”
“I don’t have facetime.”
“We’ll figure it out. I gotta go now.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, I love you.”
“Bye, I love you too.”
The call will last one minute and fifty seven seconds. Then we’ll hang up. Soon, Andy will be in Syria. My boyfriend will turn to me.
“I thought you weren’t that emotional with your family?”
“This one is different.”