Thursday, March 29, 2007

Down and Hold It There

When the lean, sprightly Physical Training Instructor bellowed for us to go into push-up position, I felt the indignity of failure creep up my arms.

It emerged from somewhere deep in the ground, cutting into my palms and winding up my trembling veins. An exercise normally used as a punishment for trainees in the armed forces, I had not assumed the position in years. I wondered if my sense of helplessness was because I shouldn't have been made to do it, or because I couldn't.

As I hung my head waiting for the first count, I saw between my awkward legs rows upon rows of sloppily dressed men, no longer soldiers but the fathers of children and the managers of employees. In their low-hung heads and raised asses, I playfully imagined a tacit, unspoken shame: the shame of being deemed too unfit to defend the nation in times of war, despite everything else they had achieved in life.

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