War Stories

My dad was a Marine in Korea. He shouldn't have been as he is blind in one eye. He never really talked much about his experiences over there. Not sure if it was traumatic for him or whether in the context of his life it just wasn't that big of a deal.

Over Christmas in STL, I heard two stories from his time in Korea. One story through my brother and one directly from my dad.

The one heard through my brother was about Monopoly. My dad loves to play Monopoly and plays it at every party that games are involved. He typically just wants boys to play but I've horned my way in that action more than once. So the story goes...my dad was a radio guy (again, not clear on any other details as he never divulged them). In the radio tent, there was Monopoly game. A never ending Monopoly game. Whenever your shift ended, the next guy came in and kept it going. When a game ended, a new one immediately started. I guess it eased the boredom. That and smoking.

The second story my dad told me directly, out of the blue, with no prompting on my part. I like this story better because it's about me! My nickname growing up was Bo. Short for Bobadink. Sometimes Bobalaa. But I went by Bo and my dad still calls me that. It never even crossed my mind why that was my nickname. I just figured he made it up like parents often do. So on Christmas Eve he tells me that one of his radio guy buddies in Korea used to broadcast fake basketball games when he was bored. Apparently, he wasn't supposed to do that, but he did it anyway. In his fake sports broadcaster voice, this guy would make up whole basketball games and announce the game play by play. The star player of every game was Bobadink. Bobadink won the game every time. Bobadink shoots! He scores! The crowd goes wild!

Like my brother was saying, as a parent, you often don't think your kids care about your life before they came along. And for a long time, they really don't. But when your own kids have kids and we have a longer perspective on things, we realize our parents were once kids and teenagers and young adults...all without us. Who knows? They might have even been fun and interesting people we would have been friends with.