Yesterday’s post drew three replies I found interesting. They asked the same question, “Is Vietnam better today than when you were there?” I have to say yes because they no longer have a Civil War going on and are not killing each other because of it. We may not like the communist form of government. Still, everyone is eating, and those in charge seem interested in helping their people rather than enriching themselves. I could not stomach the corruption of the South Vietnamese government.
I received a comment about how I see people. There are physical differences between people. When I came home from Vietnam, I found women here in the US looked strange because they had round eyes. I know women were serving when I was in Vietnam, but I think because of the small unit I was part of and sometimes the remoteness of war, there were no western females.
Growing up, I remember one of my grandfathers sitting down and chatting in a language I didn’t understand with Native Americans. When he came to Minnesota in the very early 20th century, his neighbors were all Anishinaabe, Native Americans. He learned their language because it’s nice to be able to talk to your neighbors. My grandfather, on the other side of my family parents, had immigrated from Sweden. It was a source of another language I didn’t know. Because I heard languages I didn’t understand when I was young, I didn’t find people who couldn’t speak my tongue to be strange.
I only ever found one physical difference disturbing. In fact, it was scary. I had an aunt who had a goiter. It’s a swelling in the neck caused by the thyroid gland growing too large. Here in the middle of the country, it came about because of a lack of iodine in the diet. I found this drawing of a goiter.
The person I was afraid of was an aunt of mine. She not only looked strange, but she was almost deaf. It sounded to me as a child as if she was yelling all the time. That also scared me.
I guess I never thought much about someone’s color. The Native Americans that I grew up with weren’t all that different from me. Still, I can remember them being teased for being different. I remember trying to convince my classmates the Native Americans weren’t really different from us. I gave it up because both my white classmates and my Native American classmates thought I was crazy. It could end up getting physical, so I learned to keep my mouth shut.
I remember an incident shortly after World War II. We were visiting a family member who was in the Army and his wife. There are three things I remember the visit. Every morning you would see sheets hanging out to dry because air-conditioning was rare, and people would sweat all night, so the sheets needed to dry out. I remember seeing Hershey’s chocolate bars being kept in a cooler in a store so they wouldn’t melt in the heat of the day. I don’t remember where it was in the South, but it had a large military base. The other thing I remember was walking down the street by myself, and black people would step off the sidewalk to let me pass. I was told that’s just the way they do things here.
I think the things I saw around me and the languages that I heard were just natural. They were part of life. I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but my family taught me people were the same. They might look different. They might talk differently. However, they were just people. I guess you could say I was just brought up to accept people however they are.
