A Small Moment Battle

It is always hard to believe how a destructive event can open an unexpected path in life. To this day, I am grateful it occurred because I may not be sitting here in front of my iPad, recalling the events of that year in the 90s. It all began with a knock on the door, one month before my senior year began.

I answered to see a dark-skinned man in a green camouflage uniform standing confidently on the doorstep. It was straight to business. “Your mom tells me you’re ready for the Army.”

The Army? I never even considered joining any military branch, let alone the Army. Had my mother really called a recruiter? The thought ran through my mind because I could not comprehend why my mom would think I was military material. She knew how much I loved school and learning. I had told her my post-secondary goal of entering college and majoring in education. On the other hand, I knew my mom always had my best interest at heart. Perhaps she was thinking deeper into my future than I was.

I agreed to travel with the recruiter to his office, where he had prepared paperwork and an aptitude assessment for me. Within a week, I had completed my physical and was sworn in. The recruiter had promised to keep in touch and invite me to all the high school recruit’s events. After one outing with the others, I remained unsure if entering the army was right for me. Eventually, I expressed my concern to him, and was told I could change my mind if I chose to before being shipped out to boot camp the next year. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing my fate remained unsealed until next summer.

School began. I quickly shared the news of my enlistment in the army with my small group of friends. They cheered, supporting my decision. My closest friend also confided in me their choice to enlist as well. Though they had not completed any forms or met with a recruiter, they were considering enlisting with the navy. The fashionista in me immediately became drawn to the navy (hey, I look excellent in white, and I was well aware of it). Before the first quarter of school ended, I had already contacted the recruiter and shared my change of plans. He stated to wait until the summer to make a final decision, and we could put the paperwork in for a transfer before I ship out.

Admittedly, my decision on which military branch to join changed, like my wardrobe does in the morning before I commit on one outfit to walk out in. By Christmas break, I had already considered entering every branch of the military. My original goal of attending college had vanished under the blanketed promise the military could offer me. I wanted to be the few, the proud, a Marine. I wanted more than a job, I wanted an adventure. To be all I could be, while I aim high. The military slogans were on repeat, each week a different slogan, a different branch.

Less than a month into the third quarter of my senior year, President George H. W. Bush announced Operation Desert Storm, and it became the headlines of every newspaper. My civics instructor made lessons out of it to keep the class updated with what was happening trhough news clips. War. Reading about the military invading another country, wielding weapons and taking lives. Fear. Reading about the soldiers who were sacrificing their lives on foreign land. Death. An alarm rang in my head loud enough to breathe consciousness back into me. Though I was not physically with the soldiers, I felt the pain from their struggle. I had to make an important life decision immediately.

I feared speaking my opinion to my mother. My respect for her is what made me accept all of her decisions and choices. As the adage is often quoted, “mother knows best.” It was a phrase I had learned from overdosing on 80s television. My life now balanced on the tip of my tongue, and I needed to speak up for it.

I mustered the courage to inform my mom what I was thinking.

“Mom,” I mumbled, “I don’t want to enlist in the military.”

Disappointment was the initial reaction to shoot out from her. “Are you crazy? Do you realize what it can do for you? It will pay for your college. You will not have to struggle with student loans like I do.”

She had a point. As a full-time single parent, she not only held a full-time career, but also was studying for her doctorate. It was easy to understand the financial burden of higher education, I was in the vortex of it with her. Yet, she needed to understand my resistance to enlisting in any military service. How wielding a weapon of death terrified me. My inability to murder another human, regardless of the reason. Ultimately, my deep aversion to death.

“I don’t want to die,” I declared.

Maybe it was the sincerity in my voice. Or the events happening in Kuwait through daily newsfeeds prior to my declarative stance. It was one of a few moments when my mother heard me. She felt the terror eating at me over the thought of me losing my life once I graduated from high school. She embraced me, a sign of her support for my own independent decision.

“Well,” she started, through the tears we shared, “what do you plan to do after you graduate?”

There were no other doubts on the path I wanted to walk. Years of watching her commute to the campus. Moments spent on a university campus, cemented in my memory. “College. I am going to enroll in college.”

“But, what about the money?”

“I don’t know? Scholarships? Grants? I’ll find a way. I just know, I don’t want to gamble my life just to go to college.”

By the time graduation came, I had already been accepted to a college and was preparing to spend the summer on campus for an early start. How did I escape the clutches of the military after I had been sworn in? Apparently, the recruiter’s persistence to enlist me entailed withholding the truth. The recruiter had promised that I was not enlisted throughout our entire interaction, and his efforts to enlist a seventeen-year-old, allowed me the annulment for my services. Important information that was brought to the court’s attention when my case was taken to trial.

To this day, I occasionally ponder how the course of my life might have drifted if I had enlisted in the military. If the war had not broken out, and I was shipped off to boot camp. Would I be sitting here, writing this memoir? Worse, would I even be alive? As an African American, I would have been sent to war immediately after my completion of boot camp. I had passed on the military paying for my post-secondary education, for student loans and financial strife. It was a small defining moment in my life where I realized who I was for the first time and was willing to defend it.