In Which My Kid Brother Enlists
I was informed this evening that my youngest brother has run off to enlist in the US Marine Corps. He’s not been sworn in yet, but I’ve little doubt that he will go through with it. I was convinced that he’d enlist the day he turned 18, and the fact that he didn’t was pretty surprising. Still, it’s highly disturbing that he didn’t consult anyone in his family for advice. At 19 one thinks one knows everything, but I was 19 not that long ago, and I’m old enough now to realise what a fool I was then. Military recruiters lie through their teeth, and to sign a contract without having someone else look through it is foolish.
Of course, I suppose that this is his way of asserting his adulthood.
He’s been treated like a child for the past several years living
at my parents’ house, and this is probably his means of saying,
Hello! I’m an adult now!
He could have chosen a less
drastic method of doing so.
I’m not against him signing up: the Marine Corps is an honourable institution, and it is proper and good to serve one’s country. But there are better ways to go about doing it. For one thing, he should have waited until he had a degree, when he would have been much more valuable.
And they’re going to make him shave his beard, which is just immoral…
