Some of my readers may wonder....

....why I'm so intense and never post jokes or off-topic stuff. This is why.

"Back to the story: there were seven other soldiers that came home with me that day. We flew into JFK, and we were talking on the way back: What's going to happen? What will we be facing? Is it going to be like the Vietnam era, are there going to be people spitting at us?

"We didn't know. We had that much trepidation about it.

"We get into JFK, we step out of the breezeway into the main terminal, and directly in front of us was an elderly gentleman carrying a bag. And he immediately stopped, set his bag down, and the first thing we all thought was, 'Oh, Lord, here we go already.' He just stopped and looked at us for a second, and then tears came to his eyes and he saluted us.

"And -- I'm breaking up now [editor's note: with tears] -- every one of us just started crying like babies. Everybody in the terminal -- I kid you not, at least two to three hundred people -- just started clapping, spontaneously. To me, it was so much worth what we were doing, to realize that people over here actually get what we were doing. We weren't over there because it's fun. We're over there doing a job.

"When I saw the Super Bowl commercial, I just started bawling like a baby again because that was something totally unexpected. We had no idea that people actually appreciated what we're doing, from what we see on the news. We thought we were going to come back and get eggs thrown at us. It was so refreshing to know that what we were seeing on the news is just a bunch of garbage that's being concocted by the media, that 99.9 percent of the country doesn't believe that way.

There's more to the story — and you should read it all. But here's my point. Look at what those soldiers thought they might be facing when they got home. Contrast that with the reception they actually received.

Now think about the reverse. You have an impression of what's going on in Iraq. You get that impression from the media. Given how completely different the soldiers' reception was from their expectations, how accurate do you think your perception of what's going on in Iraq (and other locations) is?

Think about that, and you'll understand why I don't waste time with frivolities. There is no time to waste!

UPDATE: I forgot to credit Blackfive for a hat tip on this story. I apologize. It was an oversight.