remembrance, and a question

Today is Veteran's Day. I originally learned it (from older family members) as Armistice Day, having to do with the end of WWI. My family is one where people typically waited later in life to have children, so you only need go back two generations to find people who fought in the "Great War" or the "War to end all wars."

My paternal grandfather was a pilot in the precursor to the Army Air Corps. Somewhere, my father has a picture of him standing by his plane - looking very young and dashing, wearing one of those old leather helmets with the goggles they used to wear. It's interesting to me to think now about this person that I only knew as an ill and cranky old man having been younger than I am now, and adventurous enough to take off in a still-being-tested technology.

On my mother's side of the family, my Great-Uncle Burt (whom I never met; he died before I was born) was in the infantry in France. My mother has inherited a very interesting scrapbook that her grandmother (Great-Uncle Burt's mother) kept while he was over there - it has newspaper stories from 1917 and 1918, and some of the scrip in which he was paid, and I think she might even have his discharge papers in there.

And I grew up seeing veterans selling poppies, and with In Flanders Fields (I wonder: do kids get that in school any more or is it regarded as too bellicose?)

And in the odd way things have of converging: one of the things I'm currently reading is a big volume of papers on soil seed banks. And several of the authors, by way of giving an example of a soil seed bank, have mentioned the poppies of the French battlefields. Interesting that I am reading that right now. And it's also surprising to me, about them having been there, dormant, in the seed bank - I guess I never thought much about where the poppies came from; I guess I assumed that people had planted them as a form of memorial. And now, having learned that the seeds were there, and that they sprang up and flowered following the shelling and general destruction of battle - well, that's more wondrous to me, and if it's not sacriligious of me to say so, almost miraculous. (Oh, I know, natural processes and all that were involved. But I often tend to see the working of natural processes as something akin to the miraculous). Beauty coming out of great ugliness, that sort of thing.


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There's no way to tack this second part on without it being absolutely and totally absurd, after what I was talking about above. And it has nothing to do with Veteran's Day, or poppies, or seed banks. But I do have a question:

Have you ever been drunk-dialed by someone you did not know?

I mean, I understand the ex-drunk-dialing, with it's pathetic "Take me back....take me back..." or its pugnacious "You were the WORST lover I ever had...." And I kind of understand the friend-drunk-dialing, the "Whoo! Guess where *I* am right now!" (Not that I've had many of either drunk-dial me, mercifully.

But anyway - when I woke up this morning (a half-hour before the alarm went off, and I was awake enough that I decided it was useless to try to get a little more sleep, so I got up and prepared to work out) there was a message on my phone. The time-stamp on the message was 2:18 am. (I am glad that the phone did not wake me up; usually, it does). This is my best reconstruction of the message: a woman's voice, speaking very s*l*o*w*l*y and with exaggerated care (my first thought when the message began was "oh, great, someone got wasted and called me") said, "My name is Layla [or perhaps it was Leia] and my number is xxx-xxxx [identical to my number save for the last digit]. I want to talk to you about...." and there the message became so slurred and unintelligible I couldn't make out what she wanted to talk to me about.

A quick scan of my memory banks failed to turn up anyone - even former students - by that name.

I will admit I was very briefly tempted to dial Layla's number and find out what it was she thought was so worth discussing, but then I decided that (a) since she didn't actually wake me up, I might as well not risk waking her up and (b) I probably shouldn't get involved anyway, nothing good can come of calling back someone who drunk-dialed you.

I don't know, though - never having been in a position to drunk-dial myself, I do not know whether the idea of calling up people with phone numbers kind of like yours and either trying to talk to them or leaving messages for them is a typical sort of thing that seems like a good idea when you're in a position to drunk-dial.

I will say, I fear my freak-magnet status (which I briefly had in grad school) may be coming back - I got another weird phone call yesterday afternoon in my office (someone with a political axe to grind and wanting to grind that on the whetstone of a college professor. I was polite and all, but as the man ranted on, I looked down at the paper I had been trying to grade with increasing despair.)

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Two other things: I received a coupon for Books-A-Million advertising "20% off for Veteran's Day." Okay, I know there are Veteran's Day sales and all that, but after thinking about the rows of white crosses (and some white markers topped with stars of David) and the fields of poppies, it makes me a little bit ill.

And: If I had to buy this to learn the "true meaning of Christmas" (that's what it says in the ad copy, folks), then something is very wrong.

I don't know - I will admit to having had Snoopy dolls when I was a kid, and toys of various Muppets. But somehow, it seems to totally prostitute my childhood memories to have a place offering the "Charlie Brown Pathetic Tree." (I feel kind of the same way about the leg lamp from "A Christmas Story").