Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

December 22, 2005

Dear Army Guys,

Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukkah!
(and Joyous Kwanza, Happy Yule, Joyful Mithra, Pleasant Solstice, Glad Boxing Day, Jolly Winter, and Thrilling Secular Gift-Giving Season!) Whatever holiday you care to celebrate at this time of year is fine by me. I am always an equal-opportunity well-wisher.

It is the holiday season here at home and I’m sure you are all homesick and missing your families. Well, don’t. The fact of the matter is that everyone in the United States turns into a rabid and unrecognizably frantic creature at this time of year, probably including your family members.

Ordinarily rational people become mindless consumers incapable of logical thought. They engage in all manner of ridiculous activities, make utterly foolish financial choices, and then try to blame it on their religion. Perfectly intelligent people suddenly and inexplicably squander literally every spare cent they’ve got on all manner of useless garbage. They gleefully fill sacks and bags and packages with a bunch of junk that, a few weeks from now, nobody will even remember having either wanted or appreciate having gotten.

It is, in my humble opinion, an embarrassing spectacle of greed. You should thank your lucky stars to be absent of it this year. This is your chance to capture a healthy dose of perspective. There is something truly disgusting about millions of otherwise sensible people jostling like swine around the sloppy trough of the American mall, grabbing at the cheap commercial scraps of conspicuous consumption in the name of Jesus Christ. Yuck.

My son, your fellow Army Guy, was home on leave in November. We were fortunate to be able to celebrate our family Christmas a full month before my inner Grinch took full control of my personality. It was the most relaxed, fulfilling Christmas of my entire adult life.

It came as a revelation to me that it is not actually necessary to work out a seating chart for the family gift exchange. I discovered that our family can manage without the minute-by-minute “Holiday Agenda” I normally provide via an Excel document. Not once did I find myself standing in the middle of a room littered with wrapping paper to yell, “Okay, everyone, we’re six minutes behind schedule! Each of you has been issued a glass of eggnog. Please proceed to the fireplace for the mandatory ‘warm family anecdotes/humorous stories’ session. If you did not come prepared with a humorous family story to tell, raise your hand and one will be provided to you on a 3x5 card.”

Instead, I was able to relax and enjoy an unrushed, non-stressed, thoroughly happy holiday. And I didn’t even care that all but one string of Christmas tree lights inexplicably failed. Both of my sons were under my roof. Nothing else mattered.

It seems I may have caused a bit of holiday trouble for you, my beloved Army Guys, though. I’m really sorry about sending you the little tiny harmlessly insignificant practically microscopic bottles of holiday cheer. It was a mistake or, if you prefer the military jargon, a “snafu.” I should not have sent you those teeny-tiny bottles of liquid insubordination. Or, more accurately, I should have been smart enough NOT to send one to a certain kill-joy member of your unit whom I shall not name here despite my bitter resentment of his persnickety totalitarian regime.

I’m just kidding, of course. I understand, despite my wish to give each and every one of you a bit of holiday warmth and cheer, that the Persnickety Totalitarian Regime Enforcer was doing his sworn duty to keep you all safe and sound. He was right and I was wrong. Mea culpa.

You should consider yourselves fortunate to have been saved from the sort of reckless disorder I tend to inspire. All hell might have broken loose had you not been prevented from ingesting all .5 oz of the lethal intoxicant I sent, illegally mind you, through the United States mail. Looking back on the incident I am shocked at my lack of good citizenship. What kind of person sends a tiny bottle of holiday rum to her brave soldiers fighting in a foreign land during the holiday season? I must be a despicable human being; I should be sent straight to the brig for having perpetrated such a heinous crime. Honestly, I should be in prison lifting weights and getting a bad tattoo. If there were any justice in this world I would be wearing an orange jumpsuit right now and singing Johnny Cash anthems to inspire my desolate cellmates. (Who, upon hearing my singing voice, could rightfully request that I be remanded to permanent solitary confinement for the mutual benefit of the entire prison community.)

My son, a completely innocent party who is in no way responsible for me or my embarrassing Army Mom stunts, has been telling me for years that, in the military, “shit rolls downhill.” He informs me, often in a pleading and exasperated tone, that he will suffer the fallout of my many bright ideas about improving military practices and morale. “Shit rolls downhill,” he says.

I have never understood this maxim. It seems counterintuitive to me.
It has been my experience that a leader who shits downhill just ends up with a bunch of shitty followers. I have puzzled over this many times and I still can’t figure it out.

But, then again, I also fail to grasp the logic invoked by the idiotic phrase,
“No pain, no gain.” It completely eludes me.

Much Love,
--An Army Mom

March 3, 2006


Dear Army Guys,

Wow, I just read a very disturbing account of a disease I have not yet contracted, but might come down with any minute now. It’s called “Alien Hand Syndrome.” It manifests with a profound sensation that one or the other of a person’s hands is no longer under his or her control and, instead, seems to be operating independently of the sufferer’s will.

The offending hand will do things that seem to be of “it’s” own volition, such as unbutton a shirt the sufferer is trying to fasten or snatch things out of the sufferer’s “obedient” hand. Sometimes the alien hand goes out of its way to publicly humiliate the sufferer by performing obscene and inappropriate gestures among polite company. The alien hand is usually the left hand of a right-handed person- or the right hand of a left-handed person- who has suffered some sort of trauma to the corpus callosum region of the brain due to stroke, injury or infection. The alien hand is totally out of control, seems to have an independent “personality,” and does all sorts of things the person does not wish it to do. There is no cure and the only treatment is to keep the alien hand busy by giving it something to hold or manipulate.

This seems like just the sort of syndrome I am likely to contract. I just gave my left hand a serious inspection and it looked slightly malevolent. I think it may be twitching with an urge to do something sneaky and unplanned. I have not had a stroke, brain infection, or injury to the corpus callosum that I know of, but can we really be sure?

I mean, how do I know if my corpus callosum is intact? It’s not as if I can take a good look at it in the bathroom mirror. For all we know my corpus callosum could have been shattered in one of those freak accidents wherein the victim is rendered brain damaged without noticing anything the least bit unusual. I’m going to keep a close watch on my left hand. You just never know when the damned thing might up and do something crazy.

Worse yet, the alien hand is prone to do anything the sufferer worries it might do- it can literally read it’s victim’s mind! Given the sorts of bizarre ideations that regularly trot themselves out of the dressing room of my imagination and across the stage of my consciousness, an alien hand could be incredibly debilitating for me. My alien hand could do all manner of social damage; I’d never be able to leave the house again.

My god, I’ve only been worrying about this for a few minutes and already the horrific possibilities of the chaos caused by my alien hand are growing exponentially. Imagine what my alien hand might accomplish if allowed long-term unfettered access to my uncensored thoughts?

Imagine, if you will, that I and my alien hand are in line at the grocery store. My alien hand could plunge itself into somebody’s purse and rifle around in there, possibly looking for candy or small change. My alien hand might manage to find an embarrassing medicinal device in the bottom of some poor old lady’s handbag, which it would then wave in the air like some sort of Olympic torch for all to see. I would look for all the world like some sort of deranged Statue of Liberty, what with my obedient hand trying desperately to claw the alien hand into submission. The old lady might likely get a few good whacks at me with her cane before Store Security is able to take control of the situation. Even then, the incident would be hard to explain and might require legal representation.

Or, let’s say, I am attending a social event such as a cocktail party or wedding reception. My alien hand might up and decide it’s a good idea to stick itself down somebody’s pants. Can you even imagine the horror and abject humiliation involved in an antic such as that? There I’d stand, mortified, as my alien hand thrust its wriggling fingers into the boxer shorts of some other guest to whom I’ve just been introduced. What could one say at a time like that? Would it be possible to distract the molested person with witty conversation and clever repartee?
I think probably not.

Knowing the kind of alien hand I would likely possess, I have little doubt that it would sneak around behind my back learning sign language just to humiliate me by publicly mocking the deaf every chance it got. My alien hand would betray me with vulgar gestures in wildly inappropriate settings, such as at church or in unsafe urban neighborhoods. It would wave itself obscenely out the car window at drive-thru banks and fast-food outlets. It would give the “thumbs-up” to defenders of Al Queda and the “Heil Hitler” salute to Neo-Nazis. Yikes!

It’s a good thing I happened to find out about “Alien Hand Syndrome” before it found out about me. I’ve come up with a plan and I am ready should this disease strike me or any of my family members. The offending hand will be holstered at all times in a sort of bi-lateral strait-jacket. There it will be allowed to twitch and fidget with no harm done and, in reward for good behavior, it will be allowed small entertainments such as a Rubik’s cube or those cute Spanish castanets employed by flamenco dancers.

Please take good care of yourselves and, for crissakes, keep an eye on your hands.
You just never know what they might do.

Much Love,
--An Army Mom