The Wall came too late.

I'm really not happy right now.

My father just called me on Skype, with tears in his eyes. He just got back from a Memorial Day ceremony, where I'm sure memories of Viernam and the people he left behind there came flooding back to him. This man, as I'm sure most people that were in Vietnam, went through so much shit, and when they came home, the country that they loved so much that they prepared themselves to die EVERY DAY for hated them. Spit in the face, right off the plane. Baby Killer. No work. No love. All because the people of that time didn't understand what the TV was showing them. They lumped the Soldiers with the war.

People get it now. Hindsight is always clearer.

Fast-forward to today. Parades, free college, food on the house, pats on the back. In June, this war on whatever the fuck will break Vietnam's record of being the longest war in American history.

To me, the war in Afghanistan doesn't even touch the hell that must've been Vietnam. Here I am, sitting pretty in an office, or playing with little kids in an orphanage, and getting treated like a hero, where my dad sits on the side of the road watching the parade he never got pass him by. That is bullshit to me. I think that the only real reason I'm getting thanked over and over is because the country as a whole feels like shit for treating those vets the way they did all those years ago.

Well, as one of those Soldiers you consider a hero, let me tell you something. Don't thank me. Don't even think about taking your guilt out on me. Instead, do what you know you should've done so long ago, America, and you walk up to that vet in the park, (you know who I'm talking about. The one in the wheelchair) and you kneel down, and you look him in the eye, and you say thank you, sir. And you fucking say it with some conviction. You say it so all the spit he wiped from his face doesn't matter so much to him anymore.

Don't thank me. I'm not even on that level yet.

P.S. I'm talking personally. I'm not representing the Army as a whole. And the Ultimate sacrifice is total, no matter what war you are in. Don't get my message twisted.