Torture of Duty III: Tears

This would be a cheap shot were it not that I share experiences with John Kerry that are not common to the typical American. I too attended boarding schools, and I did so at a young age. My boarding schools were also in foreign countries. I thus feel competent to remark on this quote of Kerry regarding his first experience with being left at boarding school in Switzerland:

"The first school I went to I was plunked down," the long-jawed Kerry recalled. "I remember arriving in Europe and my mom and dad just dropped me off. It was in the fall of 1954, we left in the late summer. Suddenly we just left Washington, D.C., went over to Europe and boom, I was in a Swiss boarding school. It was a place called Zug, right near Zurich. Our school was up on a hill, right up on a mountain. I didn't know where the hell I was and it was strange as hell. I'll never forget the empty, sinking feeling when we said good-bye. I've always been bad at good-byes, all my life, probably ever since because I learned to hate them. That feeling of going back to school, ending vacation, whatever."
--Tour of Duty, pp 27-28.

While my experience does not perfectly mirror this, I can relate to most of it. That "sinking feeling" is one I experienced, and I too don't like good-byes. We moved every year for much of my early life, and that isn't including boarding schools.

But what comes next is what surprises and appalls me. Kerry is of the generation before me (he's got about thirteen years on me), yet, he goes on:

But I remember my parents getting into that car and driving off, and boy, I tell you I think I cried for about three weeks. I was one homesick puppy."

He claims to have cried for about three weeks, and he says it with a sort of obtuse pride. "I was one homesick puppy." My generation, even at the age of 11, considered it embarassing and unmanly to cry at something like separation. Oh, I know the modern metrosexual feels compelled to experience the feeling and share it, but this isn't exactly the norm for Northeasterners of Kerry's generation. They are known for stoicism.

It wouldn't bother me much if he said he shed a few tears, but he "cried for about three weeks." Get over it. man! The world has not ended.

It's possible, of course, that he's exagerrating to show he's the modern sensitive male. But the admission that he cried for three weeks may give us insight into how quickly he accepted and even demanded Purple Hearts for wounds that many other servicemen laughed off. He takes pride in being a victim.

He's the picture of a perfect model of a modern Democrat, as Gilbert and Sullivan might put it.

Posted by dan at September 2, 2004 10:43 PM | TrackBack