call it a weapon
it’s something used to injure
defeat or destroy

Oh, how I want to ignore the world and how I want to comment on words and word play and the like but the world keeps knocking down my door and takes over my mind so that I have to comment on the world with words or go crazy.

My brother Bobby was one of the last group of young American men to be welcomed into serving their country through something known as selective service or, more simply, the Draft.

As I understand it, every American male got a draft number assigned by their birthday.

I am not sure how often it happened that numbers were reissued but I clearly remember a night when I was about 6 or 7 that we all watched TV as draft numbers were selected.

In a big bowl were 365 small identical plastic containers.

In each container was a piece of paper with a month and day.

The date in that first container that was opened got the draft number of 1.

Say that that container just opened had the date July 17th on it, that meant that every year, when the 1st draft class was called up, all those young men who were 18 years old on July 17 should consider themselves drafted.

As the US Army needed men that year, more and more draft numbers and draft classes would be called up.

Any number lower than 50, you could plan on being in the US Army for at least 2 years.

50 to 100, well, things didn’t look too good for you either.

Above 100, you could take a breath.

Above 200 you could relax.

Bobby sat there and watched, waiting for October 6th to show up.

Bobby got a number in the ’80s.

He sat in a chair and stared at the TV.

“Look at that! Look at that!“, he said again and again.

Bobby turned 18 in 1968 but was enrolled in College and got deferments.

In the fall of 1972, after graduation from Western Michigan University, he got a letter of greetings from Richard Nixon, the President of the United States that informed him that his presence at Fort Knox, Kentucky was required.

He would spend that Thanksgiving season at Fort Knox.

And on December 28, 1972, the draft was suspended by that same President Nixon.

Myself, I thought it was kind of cool.

I was 12 and the idea that my brother got to go play army with all his buddies was okay with me.

We got regular letters and the occasional phone call.

I ate it all up.

He sent his score sheet from the rifle range.

He described testing gas masks and what it was like when you had to take off your mask.

He described eating Thanksgiving Dinner in an Army mess hall with Drill Sergeants yelling MOVE IT, MOVE IT, EAT, EAT, EAT!

He described leaning to throw a hand grenade.

Bobby was a pretty good ball player and had a decent arm.

He told how he was handed a grenade by his Sergeant and shown how to pull the pin then told to put the grenade on his ear to hear the timer.

Then he was told to throw it.

Not sure how much more incentive anyone needs to throw something than to hold a ticking grenade to your ear and Bobby got rid of it as quick and as hard as he could.

There was a pause, then an explosion far down the grenade range.

“Wow!”, said his Sergeant.

“Great throw!”

Bobby taught us some of the songs they sang on marching.

Some of the cadences.

He would rattle of a line or two.

“They say that in the army, the clothes are mighty fine. Both me and my buddy can fit into mine.“

Then he stop and say, “The next words get a little dirty.”

One thing that really stuck with me was that he got to use an M-16.

He was always careful to refer to it as a weapon.

That was part of the training.

It was a weapon.

It was a weapon, not a gun.

Bobby said that if the Sergeant heard you refer to your weapon as a gun, it was 25 pushups.

Twenty five pushups with your weapon on the floor under your hands.

After each pushup, you had to recite, “I am sorry I called you a gun, Weapon!”

That got me to thinking about words and word use.

It is not a gun.

It is a weapon.

A weapon as described by the online Merriam-Webster is something (such as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy.

Injure.

Defeat.

Destroy.

I can’t do much about the nations obsession with weapons.

I can’t stop it.

But I can start using the right word.

It is a weapon.

Something used to injure, defeat, or destroy.

Not a gun.