It’s all about perspective

I’m the mother of a 19-year-old son. Viewed one way, he and his semi-adult buds are just a bunch of chuckleheads spending a whole lot of scholarship – and real – money preparing for careers in the performing arts.

Viewed another way, they’re prime candidates for military service, John Kerry’s impaired funnybone notwithstanding. (Maybe this chucklehead should have studied performing arts.)

Turn the lens to a slightly different angle, however, and these are kids who were in sixth grade when the Columbine shootings occurred – my kids were in the Jefferson County school system at the time – and freshmen in high school on Sept. 11, 2001.

After both incidents, the schools were crawling with professional counselors, psychologists and social workers to help them deal with the trauma so that healing wasn’t just all about scarring. With so much practice, Colorado’s got the grief counseling thing knocked – at Platte Canyon High School, the administration knew exactly who would be needed even while the crisis unfolded.

So, why wouldn’t young soldiers coming back from Iraq believe the military’s promises of mental health assistance to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder? Yesterday, National Public Radio reported why — soldiers returning to Colorado’s own Fort Carson in need of counseling have been getting the shaft instead. The question is, what took us so long to notice? The war’s been home for quite a while.

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