And so the ground war, as quickly as it had started, was ending. There was no grand pronouncement signaling hostilities were over. There was simply a subtle shift from being prepared to mow down anything that moved to resisting that impulse. We’d gone as far north as the Kuwaiti International Airport, found there was simply no one left interested in a fight, and had ground to a halt. Then came the official word - President Bush had issued a cease-fire.

And a merciful cease-fire it was. We had executed Schwartzkopf and Powell’s masterful ‘left hook’ assault, a lightning fast westward flanking attack, to near perfection. We had outmaneuvered and surprised the Iraqi forces, and were in the process of decimating any that elected to resist. Most did not. Those that did paid a horrible price.

President Bush’s decision to cease hostilities just 100 short hours after the ground war began was not without controversy. Many of my own Marines...

‘I just want to be inspired’ she said.

As far as cheesy, pull-at-your-heartstrings movie dialogue goes, that single line from ‘Jerry Maguire’ says it all.

As I’ve wound my way through the twisting careening career paths of adulthood, I’ve developed an intense and illogical aversion to mail from the Social Security Administration. The periodic letters that show up unannounced in my mailbox detailing just how many hours I’ve toiled away at any assortment of lifetime jobs are vaguely disturbing to me. While my Federal Government’s official interest and pride in my productivity is heart-warming, those mile markers leave me feeling hollow and a little forlorn, a living tribute to my own career indecision.

I remember the school scrapbooks of my childhood. You know the ones your Mom kept for you – a historical record, in case you actually grew up to be the President, the next Merv Griffin, or...

Sitting in the pitch black Saudi Arabian night in a reinforced fighting hole, I pulled a set of night vision goggles from their hard plastic case and strapped them on. Shivering in the surprisingly cold desert air, I looked starward and watched what seemed like an endless cloud of US and British bombers stream like angry hornets north towards occupied Kuwait and on to Baghdad. I couldn’t help but silently ask ‘Am I really here, living this?’ It was just one of many surreal moments to come. As we listened to Armed Forces Radio and the BBC give the play by play to the start of Desert Storm, we glimpsed a cacophony of dancing flashes on the horizon, felt the ground rumble ominously as if mighty dinosaurs once again walked the Earth, and wondered what the experience felt like from our enemies vantage point. War was no longer an if, or a when. It was real, and we were now in it, a few miles down the road from whatever was to come. Of the possible emotions one could feel...

It’s a miracle I lived through the 60’s and 70’s.

As if Richard Nixon, Vietnam, mutually assured destruction, and really really bad fashion weren’t risky enough, I faced the daily threat of mass-marketed toys that could maim, wound, and disfigure. Mattel? Kenner? Hasbro? Whamo? Endless fun with just a hint of mutilation thrown in for good measure. The children’s playthings of my youth would never make the cut nowadays – but how dear they were to my heart way back when.

Toy’s of my childhood – how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

The Poisonous:
In the 20 years spanning 1960-1979, nothing said FUN like toxic chemicals and vapors. The Bubble Jet, a fancy water gun you shoved bubble-producing cyanide tablets into, was great recreation. Whether squirting the solution into a friend's eyes or mouth, or your own, chemicals meant good clean fun. When you bored of the toxic bubble fun, you could relax with a couple of puffs...

My memories of Desert Shield and Desert Storm are a surreal patchwork of alternately intense, funny, and bizarre moments. If war is hell, pre-war must certainly be purgatory. Waiting for George Herbert Walker Bush, the UN, and Saddam Hussein to figure out if they were going to kiss and make up, or have a little Mid-East throw down, felt like it could last forever. After a few months of ‘the wait’, the consensus of my Marines was that anything was better than sitting out in the middle of the Saudi desert, training day after day, and waiting for the next sunrise to come. Excitement, even of the bloody, dangerous, violent kind began to look awfully attractive. Marines have become so accustomed to weathering the drudgery of agonizing delays over the past 200 years, they’ve developed an entire way of life around it, the ‘hurry up and wait’ philosophy.

Hold up a Marine unit for more than 15 minutes in one place, and you’ll bear witness to the prime imperative of ‘hurry up and...