...from the war...

I was reading a post from a friend of mine just now. It's from someone eight years my junior. Somewhere in her message she was talking about her boyfriend and his PTSD "from the war.""From the war," to me, sounds like something you get from WWII or Vietnam.To hear (or read) people my age, or younger, talk like that creeps me out in a way. I understand it on an intellectual level, but viscerally I don't get it.Why?I guess the whole thing is that wars happen to other people, to other generations. When I was in high school I wore a ribbon on to symbolize solidarity with the troops that had just landed in Iraq for the first gulf war.Those troops were just a few years older than I was.Those are the men and women that have the PTSD now.Whatever you think of war and fighting on the macro level, you also have to consider it on the micro level. The level that has the people doing the job we sent them to do.They are our generation.

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On my way home from my mom's house this Christmas eve I heard on the radio someone sending a shoutout back home to her folks in Solon.I was just getting off 422. In Solon.