Vetting Process

Heard in the hallway of my school yesterday as a fourth grader explained to his mother why there was no school today: "Mom, it's Vegetarians' Day!"
First of all, everyone knows that Vegetarians' Day was weeks ago. Then there's the reality of Armistice Day, celebrating the end of the War To End All Wars. November 11 is the date that World War One ended. In 1954, it was changed to Veterans' Day in acknowledgement of those who served in those intervening years. As of 2007, the number of military veterans in the United States in is over twenty-three million, and today we salute them.
This got me to thinking about all the veterans I know, that I have known. I thought about how I refer to myself as a veteran teacher, having served a dozen years in classrooms in Oakland. I considered the "wily veterans" we have playing on professional sports teams across this great land of ours. I thought about the kinds of experience necessary to take on that label. Do you become a veteran by just putting on the uniform, or doing the job? It seems like there's something more.
Then I thought about the past five years, and how we have all become veterans of the War On Terror. Every time we line up and take off our shoes at the airport. Every time we add another three letter acronym to our vocabulary: IED, RPG, and APC. Every time listen to a casualty count. We are all veterans. We have all served.