11.11

The veteran spoke loudly, but the gymnasium is impossible. I couldn't hear in the reverberation. Three hundred middle-schoolers sat in awful silence, and I still couldn't hear half of the poor man's words. What I could hear was less reverence and more advertisement anyway. The focus couldn't be to honor those who serve or to explain what duty looks like—oh, no. You, too, should join the armed forces and throw your life into the grist mill of rich famous men who will fund a memorial once enough of your friends are dead.