Behind his eyes

Everyone has a story. Don't believe it? Start up a conversation with a stranger. Or better yet, let them start one with you.

I went Christmas and grocery shopping on Saturday, maybe too much ambition for one afternoon, but I prefer to get a lot done in one swoop than in little bits and pieces.

I went to the gym post shopping to get a little soak in the hot tub and it was empty save one older man. I picked a corner and settled into the bubbles and jets (that is such an amazing feeling). We made eye contact at one point and acknowledged each others' presence through small but polite smiles.

I got the sense that he wanted to chat but was not sure if I'd be open to a conversation with a stranger.

After a few moments of nothing but the sound of the bubbles in the spa and some kids splashing in the pool he spoke up. He asked me if I had a lot of people to shop for this year, and I told him that my family is spread out all over the place . . . Washington, Utah, California, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina . . . but that my immediate family would be close by.

We talked about our families for awhile. He talked about his three daughters and one son and his seven grandchildren. We talked about his wife having a hard time after the youngest child moved out of the house because she had the whole empty nest thing going on. Just your average, generic, home town friendly chatter.

Then he brought up being drafted into the Vietnam War when he was 19. He'd just been married. He told me about some of the horrific things he saw . . . his best friend getting blown up right in front of him, for example, and having someone shot and killed right next to him. He told me that the Viet Cong would fight at night, so his unit would be getting shot at and they'd have to shoot back into the jungle without seeing who they were shooting at. The Viet Cong would arm their children with machine guns, so when daylight came they'd discovered that they'd been shooting at children. He told me that he watched reporters come and kick the guns away from the bodies of the kids before doing their report so it looked like the children had been unarmed.

But, he said the worst part of the whole thing was coming back to America and being spit on and called a baby killer. That, he said, was worse than being in the war.

He's telling me all of this, and I don't really know what to say. It really came out of no where. He continued that it took him more than 20 years to finally talk about it, and now he enjoys talking about it because it is a release, a therapy for him because he held it in for so long. He and his wife are still married, by the way.

He now works to help soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan get the help that they need, both physical and mental. He drives vets to Salt Lake to the Veteran's Hospital and makes sure they have someone to talk to.

He was a genuinely all around good guy. He loves his wife, daughters, son and grandkids, and seemed like the kind of guy who help a complete stranger in a time of need.

It would be easy for him to be angry and bitter and just all around mad at the world, and maybe he was for awhile. But on Saturday he was a friendly grandpa getting excited to see his grandkids for Christmas.

If he had not told me about his time in the war I would have never known he'd been there. I would not have heard stories from someone who was literally in the line of fire in one of the darkest times of our country's past.

Things that this reinforced to me are: 1. You can go through something horrific and still chose to be a kind and compassionate individual. 2. You can't always trust what the media tells you. They show you want they want you to see.

I hope I see him there again sometime. He seems like an old friend.