I was talking to the soldier:

“Okay, well let me clue you in then. This is how I see it. All your life you’re a soldier and you don’t worry about the other. They give you a can of stuff… a meal ready to eat and you open it and eat it and you don’t think about it.”

“No I don’t.”

“I know you don’t but someone else does. They happen to study the hell out of what to feed a soldier. Apparently the big challenge is to get enough calories in you so you can fight. Most soldiers don’t eat enough so they spend a lot of money to perfect this. It is a big business but anyway, here’s my point.”

“Tell me your point, P.”

“My point is that either the Army brought you cans of food or alternately maybe your sisters cooked some feast. Your family feeds you well but other than that you don’t know anything about how any of this works. You do not know how to get the food on the table. You know the things you know. Want to know what you know?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well for the most part the Army sends you out. They say, hey. Go kill this person. Here’s you plane, babe. Here’s the food you’re going to need on and by the way, I guess you better take this knife too,” I said. “There, they say handing you a knife.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, so that’s what you know. You don’t know how to plan a trip or anything else in this world so this is what I want you to glean.”

“What, P?”

“So we don’t fight so much. I want you to know it’s very hard to book a flight when you don’t know where you’re going. You know that you are going in 24 hours, if you are going at all but you don’t know if you’re going. However if you are going to go you better get ready and have this plane configured… you will need a plane to get on.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, except I am not the army. I don’t have a bunch of planes lying around so I can order one up when I need one. So what I have being as I am not the Army is limited resources and I have to deal with commercial airlines who also have limited resources… and schedules.”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah. So I have to get on one of these planes, it has to be reasonably affordable, I have to be on it in less than 24 hours and not only do I not know what city I’m going to I don’t know the state either. It’s mostly likely one of these 3, but which one?”

“I see, P.”

“Yeah, and if I get the wrong state, then what? Well, then I have to fly in and drive. Well I am already going to drive, but if I pick the wrong state or the right state but the wrong city I can find myself looking at 25 hours of travel within two days for less than 24 hours we can spend together before one of us has to go. And if I really mess up, we won’t see each other at all. I’ll wind up in some odd state to do what? Wait for the plane that takes me home and we’ll both be devastated.”

“It’s a mess, P.”

“Yeah, well there is more. Because as I’m waiting to choose which state or which city, the prices of the flights change. You know. What was affordable at noon… the price can double by 2 PM and with this short notice it often does. Plus you hit a point where you can’t buy because the notice is too short… I guess this is a terrorism thing. So maybe you see how easy it is to pull your hair out. It really takes an act of God to do this. Heroics alone are not enough. I have to pretty much stare at the screen that is changes constantly and try to nail something like some fish going by and it’s not like making decisions is my strong suit you know.”

I laughed but he was wise and did not.

“So anyway, it takes an act of God for us to meet up and we don’t know if God is going to act or not, do we? We never know. God does some weird shit to us.”

“Yes he does and no we don’t.”

“Okay, well I’ve been doing this and I am going to keep doing it but if I start yelling from time to time, I don’t want to hear about it. It’s like having a baby. Yeah, I screamed, so what. You got your baby didn’t you?”

“Okay, P. You go ahead and yell. Yell your head off, yell all you want.”

“Well okay then.”