Marching to a Different Drummer

Marching to a different drummer

Ever since I could recall anything, I have known that I do things differently. When the group goes one way because it is what everyone else is doing, I find another way to go, just because.
Most kids my age in the late fifties and early sixties were enjoying their friends they have known since birth. I, on the other hand, had lived in lived in three different states, plus a year in France. My father was in the Air Force and we traveled. I was the kid everyone talked about, but did not talk to because I was the new kid. I never got to know my teachers, because I normally only spent one year at a time in the same area.
I learned at a very young age how to lose friends. To this date, I still only have two real friends. Oh, don’t get me wrong I have tons of “geographical friends” around the world, but only two real friends. “Geographical Friends” are people that you love to be around and would do anything for while they are with you, but they never stay or you never stay in the area.
In 1971 I joined the Army. Although this was not a very popular thing to do, I did not care; I had to do my own thing. You see, most of my friends were trying to avoid the ‘War’, some were successful others were not. Some of those that didn’t avoid the ‘War’ ever had the chance to come back. Those that did were changed forever. They saw too much to comprehend or found out that they could not really talk about their time over there. When you can not talk about what you did or what you saw, people have a tendency to avoid you. Why, because they thing you are different. So when I saw a classmate sitting across from me in the dinning facility in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I thought “What the hell is he doing here?” I knew he did not go into the military until after the war, but I never thought he was cut out for the long haul. Yet, here he sat having breakfast with me some fifteen years later and a half a world away. After talking with him for an extensive time, I found out that he stayed in the military because he did not fit into the “normal” civilian life anymore. Whereas, I knew that I never fitted in with the “civilian” world.
You see my life revolves a life of exploring the world as it is. Not as it is portrayed in books. You can never understand a society by reading a book about it. You must live in it. You must let it permeate your very being. So, unlike my counterparts in civilian life, I study life by living life in all it glory and horror.
You have learned that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I would like to add to that saying with this, “a smell is worth a thousand pictures or memories.”
© Wayne Smith 2008