Me and Viet

I first became aware of Vietnam when I was in high school and the folks I ran with generally thought the war a bad thing. It defined the group politically and it was a good way to take a stand against parents and authorities of all types. Oh, and the draft. That was a bad thing , too. Scary bad.

But I got lucky. Real lucky. 18 and eligible and draft ends. How about that for variance? Peace-out, as they say.

Jump forward - quite a bit forward. Late 80's or something and I still don't know what I want to do. But I'm a reader, always have been. So I'm reading, and suddenly I think I can write. Blame Carver, blame LdG who turned me on to Dubus. Blame Anshaw who said there was something there and made me believe I should apply to Sewanee, which I did.

Which is where I met O'Brien who had just published the best fiction ever written about the war. Read: The Things They Carried. No really, I mean, read it.

And O'Brien played poker, though not all that well (Kent Nelson did - believe it- little can full of coins and bills - tough dude) - plus he drank less than me which made us even, I guess. Which oddly enough brings me around to D D who is now doing her PhD at Utah the same place where M S did hers and she brings us around to Sewanee and O'Brien and bottles of gin in the trunk - god, can the world be that small?

And why is it that, proportionately, there are more great Vietnamese poker players than any other ethnic group?

Which brings me to D, my own private Viet - who hates poker - but allows me to play so long as I don't bore her with the stories. Too much.