"hello sir, how are you sir?"

i turned around. a boy stood waiting for my attention.
i don't think that i will ever forget his face.

"sir i collect foreign coins. you have coin from
foreign country for my collection? where you from?"

"i.. i.. "

i was from america. i was not ashamed. yet i was
american standing in front of a kid whose body and
life had been shattered by american folly. i was
standing in a country upon which we had dropped
millions of tons of explosives, gassed, burned,
blighted; one where we sent young guys like me and my
friends into battle for a cause that we didnt in the
end believe in. we destroyed every single major
bridge in vietnam before we left. i was standing in a
country which citizen of sweden sent a pint of blood
in to 1972. i was standing there at a time when
america was engaged in a similiar war, with even less
support. america to these kids meant a thing that
ripped the limbs off of children, that had turned the
unlucky into deformed monsters, that killed the
relatives that they had heard about but never met who
"died defending the country", that poisoned forests,
left mines in the hills, that above all did not give a
shit about their lives, families. that was america
to them, they saw it on TV, recited it in school, they
saw it in the eyes of children with defects - to them
this was immutable fact that i had no chance of
explaining away. and when they turned on the
television or talked about the news, it was no
surprise to them that america was at it again, doing
what, to them, america does - ripping off kids' arms,
killing uncles. i was american, and i had some
fucking explaining to do.

"i -"

"he from america!"

i looked at the kid standing in front of me. he had
quick, intelligent eyes. his english was better than
hers. i couldnt speak any vietnamese. he was perhaps
14. he held several euros in his outstretched hand.
his arm was about 8 inches long, skinny and lumpy,
protruding offensively like it had been jammed into
his shoulder. sprouted in a way that only brought to
mind some vile parasitic penis. i hated myself for
noticing these things, for being and thinking these
things, for wanting to brush him off and just get back
onto the bus, for wanting to hand him all of my money,
for wanting to talk with him and rationally explain to
him why this had happened to him, for turning him into
a saddening lesson. but i had nothing to say. all of
my years of theory, all of the "heavy" reading about
international politics, the numbers and statistics
about civilian casualties, armaments, vague terms like
"containment", "cold war", "collateral damage", even
"victory", all slid away when i looked at a young
person who had been ruined by a very un-vague violent
force. i could only sit there and continue to look.
he looked like many of the other deformed that i saw
in hanoi - ambling around with odd legs, like the
young man i saw with "flipper" arms that bounced as he
played hacky-sack - but much much worse. his other
arm did not exist. he stood in the arched and
grotesque stance that characterizes those with major
spinal injuries who cannot afford a wheelchair. my
mind began to spin. perhaps 10 year old american kids
don't understand the complexities of the words
"freedom" or "democracy", either, until party
ideologues coach them. agent orange. iraqi freedom.
gulf of tonkin. WMDs.

"please sir, do you have a dime?"

and how the fuck did this kid know the word dime?

"sir?"