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Show MY SOU AT 18 Condensed from The Des Moines Register Herlan Miller (Reprinted by request from a reader) Recently I've been thinking quite a lot about my son's next birthday. He'll be 18 in a few days and the Army will be reaching for him. If he's away 27 or 30 months I'll miss him like blazes, but I decline to let myself get worked into a tantrum tan-trum about it. His mother takes it all fairly calmly, too. She loves him as much as other mothers love their young sons, but she hasn't written writ-ten or phoned her Senator. Nor does she bluster about making 30-year-old patriarchs with nine children go first. He, himself, faces the barracks and drill grounds with equanimity. equanim-ity. He isn't enthusiastic about chopping this big slice out of his young life, but he isn't maudlin with self-pity either. He seems to feel equal to whatever what-ever comes his way. We don't fear that military service will corrupt him. I think he's a boy who won't ruin easily, eas-ily, and I don't think the armed forces are much rougher on a . boy's morals than any shopping center, beer joint or ice-cream hall. Maybe the armed forces will do him good. Our neighbor down the hill swears the Navy improved his boy wondrously in two years. "He was just h helf-baked kid when he enlisted," he says, "but when he came home he was quite a man." I don't think he'll get out of the notion of going on to college later. Of course, I hope he squeezes in his freshman year first, but even after 30 months away I think his good sense will bring him back to his school books. Among the things he's wanted to do the next year or two are: work in a lumber camp, go to Mexico, spend a summer in France, drive coast to coast with three other 17-year-olds in a flivver, and sail to the Argentine Ar-gentine in a 24-foot sailboat. My wife and I have talked it over; we agree that any harm he might come by in sen&ice could happen in civilian life. He'll meet some strange varieties, vari-eties, but his chums at home aren't exactly choirboys, and I think the flavor of unusual types will do him good. They'll teach him humility, and maybe he'll end up with pride, too. Parental-love can be painful, but we don't want to keep our children in diapers buy him a big chnnt ? and hire somin0 it for him. He as quite a few of understood it 0 6u J know a few ml tend thatTo n arms, but I think I '1 tunable ladies ZS- with dons. 1 none of the boys had t';. it s a world neither the V made, we merely. 1 rely on General v and General EisenhowB-they EisenhowB-they ask for young meBv Maybe the boy won't fight. But it's sensible iT him so he'll be ready sary. " L- It isn't easy to be cab it. But it helps to face tithe ti-the boy is a natural so!c" the 18-year-olds who J-two J-two thirds of the so',-'-the Civil War. If he tri" his chances to become and grandfather in a frg" are vastly better. |