You Kill People

Wow.. This post has been on my mind for weeks. I have been having a hard time with thinking about it and writing it. But this post explains my 5 year old down to the core. He is a thinker and he worries about "adult" problems. Too much NPR - probably?

So here is the conversation... of course we are riding in the car.

Grant - "Look at that military over there."

Heather - "No, that is a cemetery."

Grant - "No that is a military."

Heather - "A cemetery is a place where you bury dead people. A military is like the army."

Grant - "Mommy, the military is the ARMY (he is trying to explain to me what it is now)."

Heather - "Grant the ARMY is one branch of the military. There are others. I work for one. I do a lot of work for the Air Force."

Grant in a whisper - "You kill people?"

Heather stumbling, trying to come up with something quick so I sort of mumble - "Not directly."

Oh, lord. I was at a loss. Reality is that I work for a large defense coordinator. In reality, I may indirectly kill innocent lives. When I applied for the job I had to think it over - basically for my own issues. But I thought it over and decided, I wanted to save our military men. Testing the equipment they would use - to make sure their aircraft did not crash... to make sure the tools they used in combat would not come back and hurt them. I don't always understand the decisions our politicians make that use the tools that I test or the places they send our soldiers, but I do understand we as a country do need to have an insurance policy - our military. I am still at a loss on what to tell Grant. I don't want to lie. So I repeated how I tested the airplanes for the military so that the pilots did not crash. And that is where I leave it for now. Hard questions for a 5 year old.

(As an aside..... I may have not totally expressed myself as I truly intended. I am not the best writer nor do I explain myself well. This is a handicap of my profession (being an engineer) and I am probably worse than others. Please do not take this as an offense or believe I am someone who does not love her country. I just don't always love our politicians or understand why we do things. I just had a hard time with this particular conversation with a 5 year old son who has no idea how many layers there are when there is a war. He is too young to understand that special interest groups sometimes lead our politicians. And he is way too young to understand that his leaders may not always be "good.")