I got your surge right here

"Dude, that was the most terrible shot I've seen in a long time," Mike shouted from the other end of the shuffleboard table as my pusher caromed past its intended target and tumbled into the gutter. "You're worse than an insurgent."

He and his opponent gathered up the pucks and began skimming them back toward me. Mike's first shot stalled halfway down the table and the other guy hammered it off with his next puck. As the round heated up and the trash talk got louder and fouler, the girl I'd been playing against wandered back to the bar. While I wanted her to come back, I sincerely hoped it would be without the wheat beer she'd been trying to foist off on me all evening.

Mike banked a puck along the left side of the table and got a decent lie in the 2-point zone. He held his arms aloft, Rocky style, a display made all the more impressive by the fact that both of his arms were still attached and functioning normally. There are plenty of folks who've spent time in Iraq who can't say the same.

Our buddy Jason sidled up to watch the game. He was also an Iraq vet, and likewise had lost nothing in the war — at least nothing visible. His service had finally run out, and his hair had grown back after four years of high-and-tight crew cuts. He sported the same carefully styled bangs he'd had in junior high, though perhaps with a deeper widow's peak. Come to think of it, it seemed like most of the guys were developing V-shaped hairdos these days. I resolved not to check my own locks too carefully on my next trip to the bathroom. Jason probably still had better hair than me.

The soldiers exchanged some good-natured insults while Mike waited for his opponent to throw. Between the two of them, they'd survived least six vehicle explosions, along with any number of events that they considered too mundane to mention but would probably send me shrieking out into the night. It was entirely possible that people had died as a result of two of my best friends' actions within the last six months. Perhaps many people. And not only was that OK, but it was something I and most other Americans respected them for. I wondered if I could do their job and then just turn it off and go play shuffleboard.

Then I considered how much pain and misfortune I come across in my own job and realized that maybe I could. Maybe anyone could, under the right circumstances. Or maybe it took a certain kind of person to do it and they all hung out together on the weekends. Maybe that was why I suddenly found myself in a room full of fighters, writers, drunks and womanizers and loved them all. In any case, I needed to visit the jukebox.

As I moved toward it, I noticed several other guys edging in the same direction. When I walked faster, so did they. I looked both ways and ran flat out for the box, sparking a stampede of pub patrons who knew that there would be no more country music in this bar if Matt Farley had his way. I stayed ahead of them for most of the way, but was swallowed up by the mob before I could lay hands on the controls.

After a ferocious struggle, Mike lunged past the crowd and started feeding change into the jukebox. Merle Haggard began blaring from the speakers. I howled in defeat as the soldiers queued up several hours' worth of Toby Keith and Lynrd Skynrd songs. Every Army guy I ever knew listened to pop country. It must be something they teach in basic training. I straggled back to the shuffleboard table.

My focus shot, I immediately started giving up points by the dozen. I went down like I was being paid to throw the game. Fortunately, there was liquid consolation close at hand. We all clinked glasses.

"When are you going back?" I asked Mike.

"To the Army, or to Iraq?" he laughed and had some whiskey. I guessed that was the only reaction a sane person could have. "Sunday, and never, I hope."

Never looks like it might come a little sooner than any of us would like. By the time you read this, the president will probably have announced a 20,000-troop escalation of the Iraq invasion. I'm willing to bet that it sounded pretty good when he called on the brave champions of America to once again do their proud duty to enhance the glorious march of freedom, or something to that effect.

To me, though, it sounds a lot like "These folks have a duty to die to help us save face." I don't want to hear any more about civil wars and conflicting worldviews. I don't want to hear another word lauding the first female Speaker of the House. And I am sick to death of euphemisms like "troop surge" and "future success." All I want to hear is that nobody I know is likely to be shot this week, and I'll be good. You'd think the world's last superpower could at least manage that.

•••

We'll be fighting in the streets with our children at our feet. And the morals that they worship will be gone. And the men who spurred mfarley@register-pajaronian.com on sit in judgment of all wrong. They decide and the shotgun sings the song.