Sixth-grade scuffle offers readiness lesson
JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. --
I come from a family of fast growers so throughout elementary school, I was always one of the biggest and strongest kids. Other kids used to ask me for airplane spins--you know, the old pro-wrestling move where one guy hefts another guy up across his shoulders and spins around like a propeller.
No one physically threatened me, except for my older brother, and he was more of the gentle-giant type. Sometimes, I'd step in to defend meeker kids who found themselves in the crosshairs of schoolyard bullies. The fights usually involved me shoving down the other kid once or twice, or if he was particularly scrappy, getting him in a headlock and putting my weight on him until he submitted (yes, I was a big wrestling fan).
No punches thrown. No eyes blackened. No noses bloodied. No nerds bullied.
Being a big guy certainly had its advantages
But as the years went by, a funny thing started to happen. Coming back from summer vacations, some kids would be three or four inches taller, when I'd hardly grow an inch. By sixth grade, my size had changed from "very big" to "somewhat bigger than average," relatively speaking.
My biggest advantage was neutralized, but I didn't realize what that meant at first.
But, oh boy, would I learn quickly.
Two bullies were picking on my bookish buddy, so I intervened. They came at me fast. I kicked the legs out from under one kid and did the same to the next (karate was popular in the '80s too). Business as usual. I was feeling pretty confident. But they weren't finished and came at me with renewed fury that caught me off guard. One clamped me in a headlock as the other kid pummeled me in the back relentlessly.
As he punched me, I recall being surprised by the genuine pain. I hadn't experienced anything like it. I didn't know how to stop it. These guys were no gentlemen-brawlers, willing to ease off upon establishing supremacy.
After the longest minute of my life, my older brother arrived to chase off the pre-teen ruffians.
What really stuck with me is that I wasn't ready for the extent of their aggression or their lack of mercy. I had grown so accustomed to easy victories that I was not prepared for the realities of violent physical conflict in which I held no advantage.
This coming-of-age beat-down provided a tough lesson, but hey, I was a kid in suburban America, and it wasn't like my top priority was to be ready to fight any foe.
But readiness is a priority for the American military, and it's easy to draw parallels between my story and our military readiness.
We've been a big superpower for a long time and we've grown accustomed to having a decisive advantage in conventional military power over our enemies, even if we haven't always used it.
We've been scrapping with guerillas, insurgents and irregulars for more than a decade, but they don't possess the conventional strength to legitimately threaten our national security. American airpower has maintained so much control over the sky, that we haven't lost an American life due to enemy airpower since the Korean War. No sovereign nation-state wants to tangle with us, knowing we will give them a frog splash off the top rope--now that's airpower!
Or would they?
Our military is not growing, and foreign militaries are closing the gap, neutralizing our advantage.
According to a Sept. 29 article by Air Force Times, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said we've been so busy fighting enemies without high-end threats to our airpower that we're behind on training to engage more formidable threats.
"We have not been tested in the real world for such a fight for quite some time," she said.
I hear similar sentiments from military leaders a little closer to me on the chain-of-command. The way I see it, the American military is just a kid in fifth grade right now. We're the big kid who is used to winning. But sixth grade is just around the corner. When a same-sized aggressor throws real punches that hurt us on our home turf, will we be ready? Will we be surprised by genuine pain? Will we keep swinging after we get our teeth knocked out for the first time?
I like to think so, but I'm also not so naïve as I once was. It's not a lesson that I'd like to learn the hard way. After all, America has no big brother to come to its rescue.
No one physically threatened me, except for my older brother, and he was more of the gentle-giant type. Sometimes, I'd step in to defend meeker kids who found themselves in the crosshairs of schoolyard bullies. The fights usually involved me shoving down the other kid once or twice, or if he was particularly scrappy, getting him in a headlock and putting my weight on him until he submitted (yes, I was a big wrestling fan).
No punches thrown. No eyes blackened. No noses bloodied. No nerds bullied.
Being a big guy certainly had its advantages
But as the years went by, a funny thing started to happen. Coming back from summer vacations, some kids would be three or four inches taller, when I'd hardly grow an inch. By sixth grade, my size had changed from "very big" to "somewhat bigger than average," relatively speaking.
My biggest advantage was neutralized, but I didn't realize what that meant at first.
But, oh boy, would I learn quickly.
Two bullies were picking on my bookish buddy, so I intervened. They came at me fast. I kicked the legs out from under one kid and did the same to the next (karate was popular in the '80s too). Business as usual. I was feeling pretty confident. But they weren't finished and came at me with renewed fury that caught me off guard. One clamped me in a headlock as the other kid pummeled me in the back relentlessly.
As he punched me, I recall being surprised by the genuine pain. I hadn't experienced anything like it. I didn't know how to stop it. These guys were no gentlemen-brawlers, willing to ease off upon establishing supremacy.
After the longest minute of my life, my older brother arrived to chase off the pre-teen ruffians.
What really stuck with me is that I wasn't ready for the extent of their aggression or their lack of mercy. I had grown so accustomed to easy victories that I was not prepared for the realities of violent physical conflict in which I held no advantage.
This coming-of-age beat-down provided a tough lesson, but hey, I was a kid in suburban America, and it wasn't like my top priority was to be ready to fight any foe.
But readiness is a priority for the American military, and it's easy to draw parallels between my story and our military readiness.
We've been a big superpower for a long time and we've grown accustomed to having a decisive advantage in conventional military power over our enemies, even if we haven't always used it.
We've been scrapping with guerillas, insurgents and irregulars for more than a decade, but they don't possess the conventional strength to legitimately threaten our national security. American airpower has maintained so much control over the sky, that we haven't lost an American life due to enemy airpower since the Korean War. No sovereign nation-state wants to tangle with us, knowing we will give them a frog splash off the top rope--now that's airpower!
Or would they?
Our military is not growing, and foreign militaries are closing the gap, neutralizing our advantage.
According to a Sept. 29 article by Air Force Times, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said we've been so busy fighting enemies without high-end threats to our airpower that we're behind on training to engage more formidable threats.
"We have not been tested in the real world for such a fight for quite some time," she said.
I hear similar sentiments from military leaders a little closer to me on the chain-of-command. The way I see it, the American military is just a kid in fifth grade right now. We're the big kid who is used to winning. But sixth grade is just around the corner. When a same-sized aggressor throws real punches that hurt us on our home turf, will we be ready? Will we be surprised by genuine pain? Will we keep swinging after we get our teeth knocked out for the first time?
I like to think so, but I'm also not so naïve as I once was. It's not a lesson that I'd like to learn the hard way. After all, America has no big brother to come to its rescue.
