CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/507867
CityViewNC.com | 13 ple like me, the Plastic Soldier Fighters, understand that we don't understand. Still, their own cynicism was represented as almost self-preservation for them. It was a stitch in a tight line of suturing over invisible battle wounds that, if le open, would bleed out into something uglier than just cynicism. e indictment could have been served on me. Yet I did not take offense. In fact, it made me love those particular guys more. Some things cannot be made right with simple kind- ness. Some things cannot be healed at all. My sons practiced lacrosse the other day. While waiting to ferry them home, I took the opportunity to walk around the fenced barriers inside of which my boys were running full tilt. Only aer making my turn between the fields did I realize that the even younger group of children buzzing around where I was now walking was also practicing lacrosse. eir coach was earnestly doing for them in lacrosse what I strove to do so many times coaching baseball. He was trying to make them more skilled than they were when they came there and he was trying to make them move more with one purpose. Coach was running amongst them, leading them, as well as instructing them. It stirred empathy in me. en, he broke free of their circle, such that I could see him more clearly; clearly enough to see titanium where on most of us is skin and bone. I do not know the circumstances that resulted in that tita- nium appendage becoming an accoutrement to that lacrosse practice. But when one lives long enough in this town, when one's mom marries people whose people end up down range, Col (Ret) Charles King, CW2 Emily King and Gen (Ret) John Rose one comes to have an idea of ways it might have happened. is I do know: the fellow who ran among the kids in such a way as to lead them toward something new…the fellow who ran amongst them as a volunteer coach and role model…that fellow's eyes were ablaze with passion and they were any- thing but cast down. His eyes were looking into the eyes of his young padawans with all manner of expectation for their futures. And, as discerned by me anyway, for his own. I understand that I do not understand. Just know, you whose business suit is or was a shade of camo, that deep inside of the vast majority of us who do not understand, there is an indescribably deep gratitude for your role in providing for us the luxury of enjoying our own ignorance and innocence. CV Fort Bragg Mini-Mall on Reilly Rd 910-436-7877 Westwood Shopping Center 439 Westwood Shopping Center 910-860-1220 store2974@theupsstore.com theupsstorelocal.com/2974 Printing Services Banners - Signs UPS / DHL / USPS Mailboxes