Today is Veterans’ Day in the US, Armistice Day in other countries. On this date in 1918 an armistice, a peace agreement, was signed which took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to end the hostilities on the Western Front. And eventually to end the War to End All Wars – World War I. Since it is numbered, that plan obviously didn’t work out so well.
Months ago, I was reading my morning literary caffeine, the comics, and cartoonist Darrin Bell used Candorville to offer a simple solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let the Moms hug it out.
There had been suggestions by other authors in high places, like Facebook, to replace our troops with their menopausal moms to take out the terrorists. And frankly, as a menopausal mom and a veteran, I think either plan would work.
First of all Bell’s plan would bring all the moms together and they would immediately bond, because there is no woman who looks at her newborn and pictures that baby in a kill or be killed situation. That’s just not the plan we have in mind. We work so hard to teach them to be kind and loving and caring. We would all take our kids home, give them a snack and a hug, and probably ground them for a couple of weeks until all this nonsense stopped.
The other plan, sending out the women of a certain rage to obliterate the radicals, would also work. Take away my daily doses of hormones, threaten my progeny, and you will be dealing a monster that makes the Hulk look timid. Again, problem solved.
Understand that I honor our veterans. The men and women I served with, my son’s contemporaries, my father’s, and grandfather’s as well. I inadvertently dressed in red, white and blue today. I intentionally got my flag ready to display. But I would love to have the next generation of veterans be Peace Veterans. Maybe we moms can work it out.