I woke up today and realized I needed to clean my room. I had been avoiding it since arriving back from the StoryLine Conference in Nashville. One of the conference sessions reminds me my motivation is highest in the morning to do unpleasant things so I began the unpacking. I unloaded my bag, smelling the armpits of my shirts to determine their level of cleanliness. I put the kinda not clean stuff back on hangers and the really not clean stuff in the laundry basket. As I was sniffing one of my t-shirts, I looked up to notice a small figurine staring down at me from a shelf in my closest. It is a single army man. As all army men, he stands on his individual base and is still surrounded by tiny little plastic webbings that were never entirely punched out during the fabrication process. Beige is a generous term to describe his pale shade because I feel bad describing an army man as colored ānudeā. I paused to consider this fleshly colored army man and the unique position he has been eternalized in.
Army men are typically immortalized in brave positions, but not this one. Usually, they are fixated in the shooting position, while others are leaning forward waving in the next round of troops. Some are holding binoculars, while others are crouched with a bazookas or loading mortar rounds. But not this gentleman. He is not belly-side down, crawling on the ground with one of his legs in a propelling motion pushing him forward toward his plastic destiny. He does not carry a parachute bag as though he were landing in a hot zone. This poor man didnāt even get the honorable mention of being the radio operator, holding an oversized phone to his tiny poorly defined ear.
This particular army man has just been shot. It is a figurine representing an infantry man who is beginning the process of dying. He leans back, feeling the force of the blow, his knees buckling beneath him. Without question, heās going down. His left hand clutches his wound directly over his heart. His other arm is outstretched to his side in full cinematic glory. In that right hand, he still holds a little plastic webbing connected to gun that was obviously just released from his hand. But itās his facial expression that signifies the most advanced portion of his molded torment. His mouth is wide-open screaming in pain, his eyes squinted shut, and his head is thrown back in agony. He is dying. Forever.
I suppose he represents the constant, ongoing agony of feeling the sting of the bullet, the weak-kneed feeling of falling to the battle-ridden ground. He is all alone and dying on his individual plastic base. I imagine this to be a tenous and painful position and he most likely needs a break. That for one quick second, he just wants to sit down, grab a sip of water, and relax with a book. But the bullets keep on coming. It must be quite difficult to handle the position he's been eternalized in, lost somewhere in the middle of the living and the dead.
Eventually, he, just like anyone else in his position, would need to make up their mind. You could die. As you fall into the muddy and mortared ground, you shut your eyes, grasp your wounds, and listen to your heartbeat slow until you slip into eternal warmth. Or you choose to live. Youāve fallen once, twice, maybe three times, but somehow you manage to get your feet fixed beneath you on your individual platform that was no doubt made in China. You grab the barrel of your gun and pull yourself back to your feet. Your beige blood runs down the front of your beige uniform and, despite the ongoing pain of your injuries, you fix your eyes forward. You simply canāt die yet. You have no other option than to continually lean forward.
If I were an immortalized army man holding one position forever and ever, Iād want to look like that.