Friends

A couple weeks ago I went to a hockey game at Joe Louis Arena with three friends of mine. The seat beside me was empty during the first period, but in the second a girl came and took the spot. Her friends were seated one row above.

During a stoppage in play in the second period the Red Wings put a video tribute to American troops up on the video screen and the Wings fans (generally pretty classy) gave the troops assembled a standing ovation.

The girl beside me mentioned she was in the military. A first sergeant. I was kind of surprised; she was literally a couple inches above five feet and pretty slight of build. Didn't look like G.I. Jane at all. She said she was 22.

"I wish they'd give me a standing ovation," she said. I said maybe if she wore her uniform in public people would know she was a soldier and they'd probably thank her.

"No," she said. "They'd get mad at me. People think it's our fault that we're at war."

I asked her if she'd been overseas yet and she said no, she was shipping out in January. I wished her good luck and told her come home safe and she didn't seem concerned.

"I will," she said. "They don't give us automatic weapons and armored trucks for nothing."

I was pretty struck by her confidence. It seemed kind of surreal.

Then she called Oli Jokinen a fag. So the conversation kind of tailed off from there. By the third period she and her group of friends were being harassed with a bunch of drunk young guys from the nosebleed sections.

Anyway the other day I was watching the (American) news and they rolled through the pictures of the latest troops to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were nine of them, mostly in their early twenties.

I guess I wondered if the girl's confidence was real or just a reaction to the whole "going off to war" thing.

And despite her calling Oli Jokinen a fag, I'd still like her and her friends to come home safe.