Wobbly

I was 19 years old the first time I saw the ocean. For real, not on television. We don't have any oceans in Oklahoma. You don't get a real sense of the size of it on television. I'm not sure you can even get a real sense of the size in person. It's a lot of water.

What I liked best was standing barefooted in the shallow water, letting the littlest waves run up over my ankles. When the waves wash back out, they suck the sand out from under your feet. It feels weird and makes you all wobbly.

My battalion was shipping out for Iraq. I don't know why they call it 'shipping out.' We weren't going by ship. They gave us a couple days of leave before we shipped out, so some of us went to see the ocean.

Five days later I was in Iraq. Twenty-two days after that a humvee up near the front of the convoy got zapped by an IED. We all went to help and that's when the secondary IED went off.

IED. Improvised explosive device. They call it that, I think, because all those syllables makes it seem more technical and less personal. It's a fucking booby trap, is what it is. I don't know why they just don't say that. I'm really starting to hate words with lots of syllables.

Here's another one. Traumatic amputation. That means you got your leg blown off.

They shipped me out by plane again. This time to a hospital in Germany. In six weeks I went from Oklahoma to California to Kuwait to Iraq to Germany. Must be three quarters of the way around the whole world.

The doctors and nurses tell me I'll learn to walk as good as before. The doctors say I'll probably experience some somatosensory discomfort. The nurses call it phantom pain. What it means is my leg will probably ache, even though my leg is just a pile of mush somewhere in Iraq.

I kind of hope they're right, because right now I don't feel much of anything. Except when I sleep. Then I dream about standing barefooted in the shallow water of the ocean while the waves wash the sand out from under my feet, making me feel all wobbly.

posted by greg @ 10:05 AM