BLAH!

This week I started reading Joker One. I'm not really a nonfiction type person; I eat up all the romance novels and comedies and such so a book on the military is really not my favorite. I really can't stand it so far and since I've read my 100 pages, I think I am just going to stop! The story line really isnt that bad. Its the accounts of a Marine as he becomes a platoon leader and about the struggles and memories he has of his men in battle. I thought it sounded good, but I don't understand about 75% of what he is talking about, which makes it a REALLY REALLY slow read... At the beginning, I was hopeful. The Marine gave a short reason why he wanted to write this book and he felt that his men had a story that deserved to be told. He kept saying how proud he was of them, and that he knows there are other Marines out there worthy of a story, but this book is about his men.

One interesting part, but also kind of cruel and gruesome, was one of the exercises they had to do in training. There are two platoons involved per round and one platoon goes and lies in a trench at the bottom of the hill. The other platoon has to manage to get over this double sided razor wire to get to the hill so they can climb it and have a mock attack on the "enemy." Being as smart as he is, the platoon leader decides to have his men go around through the nearby forest and stage a side attack on the unsuspecting trench waiters. They throw fake grenades that don't actually detonate to show the explosions that would go on. However, the main corporal in charge of all the platoons, nicknamed Ox, decides that this was not the route the men should have taken and makes them do it over again, this time going through the barbed wire. To cross the wire, 3 men have to sacrifice themselves as "flying squirrels" and lay across the wire so that the other men can walk on their backs! They get real gashes and awful wounds from being the sacrifice, but they have to do it anyways. And the corporal enjoys watching it!

How terrible. I would never do such a thing for guys that I barely know. Especially just in training. Anyways, the guy's home life stinks. He's been married for a year and his wife works all the time to keep her mind off the fact that her husband is never home. So they are both workaholics. Good thing they don't have kids yet or they would be growing up without either parent!

On that topic. I really feel bad for kids who are raised by nannies and babysitting or stay at daycare all day everyday. The point of having kids is to be able to enjoy them and spend time with them! When two workaholics have kids, no one but the child suffers! Sure they make big bucks to buy the kid whatever he wants, but what he wants most, he can't have. Before I have a family, I am going to make sure I can actually support them while being able to take time off and enjoy their young ages! They are only young once! Or if I can't, make sure that my husband is home often. My children will not be raised by a nanny. What's the point of even having kids if you aren't the one that raises them? Are they just supposed to cooperate when you feel like being with them? And all the times you don't, the times you choose work instead, they are supposed to be OK with that too?