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The puppy (turned into an army man)
Jan. 2nd, 2005 12:41 pmI have this memory of eating lunch outside one day in high school. This lunch was particularly memorable because someone asked me to insult him. How often do you get someone to beg you to insult him? Unfortunately, I’m too polite of a person to insult people so rashly. But you had to know this guy would keep pushing me to insult him so I had to call him something.
So I called him a puppy.
A puppy? Why a puppy? They say as a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. It was the case with that guy.
The puppy’s name is Matthew Charles Bouxsein. I first met him in junior high through another one of my close friends. Somewhere along the way, he picked up the nickname Maph. I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure why, but it stuck.
I truly got to know him better during gym class. When you have football coaches who don’t give a flip about the class and consider walking around a track exercise, you start talking to people. Maph and I would argue incessantly about stupid subjects, like the need for war. He had some interest in war because his grandfather had been a ball gunner for a B-17 Flying Fortress in World War II (his grandfather unfortunately did not make it through the war).
We forged our friendship on the battlefields of multiplayer games, like WarCraft II and Starcraft. Our best times came during our Team Fortress Classic days. We still laugh about a time when I threw a MIRV grenade for ten kills because I dropped it when the opposing clan was lining up for a picture before a clan battle.
Randomness is the best and worst part of his friendship. Once, when we were younger, we decided to find out where this ditch went. We went quite a ways before we had a choice of going back or trying to navigate through a treacherous series of rocks. We were fated to slip and get drenched in ditch water that day.
There was a time that we did not exist. We did not exist because we both worked at the same movie theater. There are many stories from my time at the movie theater which I may share some time, but suffice to say that we both learned the real world kind of sucks (that’s to say the real world isn’t about playing a bunch of video games all day long).
He always has this great idea to improve movies. He would ask Do you know what would make this movie better? No. Hot sex. Five seconds later, he would ask the same question. I knew the answer the second time around.
He was particularly constant in some things, like his devotion to Everquest. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was playing EverCrack. He played that game so much that he often failed to show up to class. Oh, he was at school, he just wasn’t in class. He was most likely napping due to the fact that he got no sleep from playing that addictive game too long.
He was that guy who wore a suit instead of a tuxedo to prom. The maddening thing is that he went alone. A fair looking girl hinted that she wanted him to take him to prom but he hesitated too long (that girl ended up taking a junior to prom). He’d sit and pout and proclaim that he didn’t want to be there and was only there because his parents wanted him to be. I think he wouldn’t have minded going with that one girl. Bozhe moy, hindsight’s twenty-twenty.
So it came as a great shock to us when Maph informed us that he would enlist. Maph, do you realize there’s a war going on? Sure, but I’ll make more money off hazard and combat pay. Maph, do you realize that you won’t be able to do anything you want in the army? I’ll be okay. Maph, do you realize that you could die? Eh, I won’t die.
Actually, it did not surprise me too much that he enlisted. I would go jogging with him and he seemed to be fit. Secretly, he was more fit than you would think because he randomly walked or ran to places (including my house once, which is a decent twenty minute jog).
Maph is an enigma.
It was a strange atmosphere when I ate dinner with him Friday night for New Year’s Eve. The rest of the high school crew had other plans, so we went to his favorite haunt of Appleby’s. He was leaving for Kansas in the morning even though he didn’t have to report back until the fourth of January. All this knowing that he would be leaving for Iraq at the end of the month.
Me: Why don’t you stay a bit longer in Ft. Smith, Maph?
Maph: There’s nothing for me here.
Me: Why not spend some time with your old friends before you ship off to Iraq?
Maph: I really don’t feel like spending my time with those guys. Maybe you or John or Andy, but not the other guys...
Me: Sigh.
Maph: Don’t sigh at me, Daniel, there’s nothing for me here.
And then he gets this look into his eyes and tells me that he isn’t going to come back to Ft. Smith for a while. The only reason he came back was to buy a car. Then he goes off on some tangent about how he doesn’t know anything about Andy, our good friend. He didn’t know that Andy was going to med school. That’s because you don’t ask him, Maph. He thinks that people want to talk about themselves, but I don’t think that most people want to talk about themselves unless they’re asked (at least that’s how my high school crew works). He then gets this really determined look on his face and says that he wants to be in the position where he makes so much money he doesn’t have to worry about the little things. Whoa, where did this come from? He wished that his parents had given him direction, so he was going to be damn sure that his son was going to receive direction. And he defined greatness as making a whole lot of money. I spent most of the time going “But…” or “That’s nice, but have you thought about…”
That outburst surprised me. He’s really changed. I can’t really call him a puppy anymore, even if he does have the tendency to make the same mistakes over and over. He’s an army man, for the army has given him direction. To what ends that takes him only the good Lord knows.
May the good Lord return him safely to us.
So I called him a puppy.
A puppy? Why a puppy? They say as a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. It was the case with that guy.
The puppy’s name is Matthew Charles Bouxsein. I first met him in junior high through another one of my close friends. Somewhere along the way, he picked up the nickname Maph. I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure why, but it stuck.
I truly got to know him better during gym class. When you have football coaches who don’t give a flip about the class and consider walking around a track exercise, you start talking to people. Maph and I would argue incessantly about stupid subjects, like the need for war. He had some interest in war because his grandfather had been a ball gunner for a B-17 Flying Fortress in World War II (his grandfather unfortunately did not make it through the war).
We forged our friendship on the battlefields of multiplayer games, like WarCraft II and Starcraft. Our best times came during our Team Fortress Classic days. We still laugh about a time when I threw a MIRV grenade for ten kills because I dropped it when the opposing clan was lining up for a picture before a clan battle.
Randomness is the best and worst part of his friendship. Once, when we were younger, we decided to find out where this ditch went. We went quite a ways before we had a choice of going back or trying to navigate through a treacherous series of rocks. We were fated to slip and get drenched in ditch water that day.
There was a time that we did not exist. We did not exist because we both worked at the same movie theater. There are many stories from my time at the movie theater which I may share some time, but suffice to say that we both learned the real world kind of sucks (that’s to say the real world isn’t about playing a bunch of video games all day long).
He always has this great idea to improve movies. He would ask Do you know what would make this movie better? No. Hot sex. Five seconds later, he would ask the same question. I knew the answer the second time around.
He was particularly constant in some things, like his devotion to Everquest. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was playing EverCrack. He played that game so much that he often failed to show up to class. Oh, he was at school, he just wasn’t in class. He was most likely napping due to the fact that he got no sleep from playing that addictive game too long.
He was that guy who wore a suit instead of a tuxedo to prom. The maddening thing is that he went alone. A fair looking girl hinted that she wanted him to take him to prom but he hesitated too long (that girl ended up taking a junior to prom). He’d sit and pout and proclaim that he didn’t want to be there and was only there because his parents wanted him to be. I think he wouldn’t have minded going with that one girl. Bozhe moy, hindsight’s twenty-twenty.
So it came as a great shock to us when Maph informed us that he would enlist. Maph, do you realize there’s a war going on? Sure, but I’ll make more money off hazard and combat pay. Maph, do you realize that you won’t be able to do anything you want in the army? I’ll be okay. Maph, do you realize that you could die? Eh, I won’t die.
Actually, it did not surprise me too much that he enlisted. I would go jogging with him and he seemed to be fit. Secretly, he was more fit than you would think because he randomly walked or ran to places (including my house once, which is a decent twenty minute jog).
Maph is an enigma.
It was a strange atmosphere when I ate dinner with him Friday night for New Year’s Eve. The rest of the high school crew had other plans, so we went to his favorite haunt of Appleby’s. He was leaving for Kansas in the morning even though he didn’t have to report back until the fourth of January. All this knowing that he would be leaving for Iraq at the end of the month.
Me: Why don’t you stay a bit longer in Ft. Smith, Maph?
Maph: There’s nothing for me here.
Me: Why not spend some time with your old friends before you ship off to Iraq?
Maph: I really don’t feel like spending my time with those guys. Maybe you or John or Andy, but not the other guys...
Me: Sigh.
Maph: Don’t sigh at me, Daniel, there’s nothing for me here.
And then he gets this look into his eyes and tells me that he isn’t going to come back to Ft. Smith for a while. The only reason he came back was to buy a car. Then he goes off on some tangent about how he doesn’t know anything about Andy, our good friend. He didn’t know that Andy was going to med school. That’s because you don’t ask him, Maph. He thinks that people want to talk about themselves, but I don’t think that most people want to talk about themselves unless they’re asked (at least that’s how my high school crew works). He then gets this really determined look on his face and says that he wants to be in the position where he makes so much money he doesn’t have to worry about the little things. Whoa, where did this come from? He wished that his parents had given him direction, so he was going to be damn sure that his son was going to receive direction. And he defined greatness as making a whole lot of money. I spent most of the time going “But…” or “That’s nice, but have you thought about…”
That outburst surprised me. He’s really changed. I can’t really call him a puppy anymore, even if he does have the tendency to make the same mistakes over and over. He’s an army man, for the army has given him direction. To what ends that takes him only the good Lord knows.
May the good Lord return him safely to us.
