I was driving with my brother yesterday and somehow we got talking about Saving Private Ryan, and he mentioned when they talk about "fubar." The guys in the troupe won't tell the translator what it is; it means fucked up, beyond all recognition/any repair/all reason. It's a military term, and it's a thing. It's not just from the movie, that's what gets me the most.
I don't know how we got talking about this, but he wondered why they wouldn't tell the translator guy what it meant. He said he looked it up in his dictionary and he couldn't find it. As someone who writes and reads, I started thinking about why someone wouldn't explain it. I told my brother, "Maybe they didn't want to make him fucked up. Like once you hear it, you can never stop thinking about it." His response was that of course he was fucked up, he was in a war, everyone was fucked up. So I said he was the innocent one of the group, maybe they wanted to protect him. He said they couldn't, in the end he was just some stupid shmuck who let his friends get killed because he was too scared to kill some German.
And then he made fun of him.
Yeah, it's just a movie, and he's just an actor, and I'm pretty sure my brother was joking, but still. Really? shouldn't we be at least a little put off when someone, even jokingly, makes fun of what a soldier has gone through? Especially me and my brother. We have never known anyone personally who went off to war.
The movie was based on a true story, and even if it never featured a translator like the one in the movie, there were thousands of men who were just like him, book smart, ambitious, and they wanted to do right by their country. They were innocent, at least to some extent. To me, they didn't explain it to him because if he couldn't be saved, if the most innocent among them couldn't be protected, what hope did any of them ever have? And maybe that's all they had to cling to in their shit infested lives of war.
But it also got me thinking about something else as we drove through Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, affluent places that feature outdoor Shakespeare, (multi-)million dollar homes, and fine dining, what right did we have to say anything about what they went through in the war? I thought about suffering, how universal it is, and yet, how unique. It reminds me of a song, What It's Like a song by the band Everlast. It talks about several different scenarios in which someone is in a difficult position, a homeless man, a pregnant woman, and a drug dealer.
Then you really might know what it's like.
The pregnant woman story always stood out to me. "God forbid you ever have to walk a mile in her shoes. Cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose." As a woman, it's something I feel strongly about. But that's another blog for another time.
In all our pain, we forget that feeling pain is universal, but that each pain is unique. We can't underestimate someone else's pain. There are so many different kinds, and so many different people. To say there is one pain is to say there is one person.
On that same drive home, past Lafayette, there's a hill full of crosses and stars and moons, crosses for those that have died in service. It reminds me of another pain - the pain those losses caused their loved ones. That is a horse of a different color.
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