Rain and Heroes

It is raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock outside.

That’s one of my dad’s old sayings, and it seems to fit. I can hear the rain rapping on the skylight like a million pygmy fists. This dog of mine won’t go out in it to relieve herself before bedtime, so around 3:45 a.m. she’ll start whining to go out because she can’t hold it anymore. And then she’ll come back in soaking wet and smelling like wet Fritos and furry musk, and she’ll start licking her paws like a cat because she doesn’t like her feet wet.

And I’m supposed to go back to sleep after all of that?

Which is just nuts. I mean, licking her wet feet. That’s like telling a kid, “Shut up that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” If a dog’s foot is already wet, how does a wet licking help the situation?

This is one of the many mysteries I like to ponder during the day. Like how come, after decades upon decades of typing, I still can’t type without a typo every fourth word? If practice makes perfect, then I should be the world’s #1 typist. In fact, I probably get more practice than most, because I have to backspace constantly and retype my mistakes, so I’m typing twice as much as what shows up on the page. And yet the typos are pretty consistent no matter how many hours I live on the computer each day.

That rain is making it hard for me to concentrate. This is the kind of rain my daughter would run out in and stand there with her face looking up at the sky. She’s always liked weather anomalies. Sleet, hail, snow, and crashing rain lure her out to the back patio every time. She can’t resist. Like a moth to a bug zapper.

We went to a function tonight at the request of our stockbroker to see a Medal of Honor recipient. He was in his seventies and fought in the Vietnam War. Gosh what a funny man he was. I had consented to go to this out of a sense of duty, but I had no intention of being anything but bored by the whole affair, except for the offering of free food.

This guy, who’s name I’ll add later when I get up and look it up in the book they gave us, was so humble and so witty. He got the Medal of Honor – the highest honor in the country, for flying wounded out of a ground attack and delivering ammunition when he came back for more wounded. He did it with another guy – both of them volunteering and getting shot at. He went through four different helicopters – when one got shot up he’d trade it for another. He saved over 70 lives that day.

He said he went to the White House for the Medal ceremony, and he was wearing a hat – some kind of uniform hat – and one of the aids told him it was not appropriate. “This isn’t the first inappropriate thing I’ve done, and it sure won’t be the last.” He kept the hat on, and President Bush said, “Nice hat,” when he hung the Medal on him.

He also got about forty-eleven other medals, but the one that made him most proud was the Good Conduct Medal. He pointed at the Medal of Honor and said, “This one I just happened to get after a day’s work – the Good Conduct Medal took me a whole year to earn.”

I came out of that presentation a lot happier than I went in. I don’t know how men do it – go to war and fight and then come home and go about their business as if they hadn’t witnessed horrors you and I can’t even imagine. I’m pretty stoked to have had the honor of meeting this man, whose name is – let me get up, I’ll be right back – here we go, whose name is Bruce Crandall.

The moderator asked him if he got scared while all this was going on – he flew in and out of the war zone 22 times that day. He said he was too busy to be scared. He just knew if he didn’t help those guys, they didn’t stand a chance.

This funny, fearless man who saved so many lives and stood up for his hat at the White House – he’s now my new hero and inspiration.