I was chatting with a colleague at work and was reminded of a high school classmate who changed my world view forever by happenstance.
The high school mate eventually became a fairly good friend – to the point where he not only didn’t punch me for dating his ex-girlfriend but playfully ribbed me for it.
He was a huge young man. Built like a gorilla. Lifted weights. But he was about my height, meaning he wasn’t very tall. Kind of wavy, curly dark brown, almost blackish hair. Hair everywhere. By the end of the school day his beard grew out enough to make him look like a pirate.
Being a 16-17ish teen who lifted weights and who stretched out his t-shirts you’d think he would have been pretentious and vain. If he was, I didn’t see that aspect of him. What I saw was lots of funny, good natured, and playful attitude from him.
We met as science/chemistry lab partners and found our personalities were a good fit. Almost too good, as we both enjoyed doing side experiments we ouldn’t have been doing. These always involved mixing things together or burning something we shouldn’t have done.
His name was Jean (pronounced “Jon”). He was also from Lebanon. Both I remember as I called him “Jon-Jon from Lebanon”. His personality being what it is, he didn’t mind and thought this was funny.
He and family had been in the States for a few years already. The reason they’d moved was to get him out of the Lebanese Army. He’d been a soldier since he was ten years old. I don’t recall if he fought for or against the Palestinians.
Naturally that info raised questions for me and one of the first I asked was, “Did you get to kill anybody?”
I remember him saying, “Yes” and then making a deflection joke to steer us away from that topic. That was a clear message to me to not follow this line of questioning any more. Ever.
That’s when my world view changed. It was like a veil was lifted and I could see things outside of my cotton-wrapped existence.
While I was learning how to operate the gears of my Christmas-gifted ten-speed bicycle so I could race with my friends, Jean was learning how to disassemble, reassemble, and maintain field rifles so he could kill the opposition.
While I was playing “let’s see who could jump down the most stairs without falling” game with my brothers and sisters, Jean was learning how to scale and descend walls to keep from being bayonetted by people chasing him.
While I was lobbing snowballs over the street at my friends on a cold winter’s day for the satisfaction of seeing the snow splat on them, Jean was lobbing rocks and Molotov cocktails at fellow children and grown men and women with the intent of disfiguring or killing them.
Some say we are America the land of Capitalist Pigs. Do we consume too much without thinking of others? At times, yes. But now and again I am reminded of Jon-Jon from Lebanon and am thankful that we are not America the land of Child Soldiers who are conscripted to fight State-sponsored gang wars.
At least, not yet.