My first desire was fulfilled when, a year and a half later, the Marine Corps shipped me off to Vietnam. Before that, though, I thought my fleshly paradise was within reach when three blonde stunners, all long tresses, ruby red lips and cloying perfume, pulled up beside me in a red Camaro in Washington, D.C., and asked if I wanted a ride. Of course I wanted “a ride,” and I was eagerly climbing into the back seat when one of them turned to me and said, in a sweet southern drawl, “Um . . . you all know we’ah boys, right?”

No, I did not know that, and I quickly backed out of the car in shock and confusion while stammering, “Oh, uh, no . . . uh, sorry; my mistake.”

But now, 44 years later, I’m still not sure who had made the mistake — me, the three strangely alluring creatures or God. Was I laughably naïve? Were they monumentally misguided? Had the Creator bungled their creation? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.

That jarring experience flashed back into my consciousness recently because the matter of gender confusion has been much on my mind as my church grapples with a proposal to declare itself Open and Affirming, a formal statement that our congregation will welcome anyone — man, woman, child or anyone in between — who follows our faith.

I’m a member of the committee that is steering the congregation toward a vote to accept the O&A designation, an educational and informational process that will take at least a year, and probably two. The long time frame is necessary to ensure that an overwhelming majority of the congregation is in agreement with this controversial goal. Anything less than a 95 percent acceptance rate would be divisive and, therefore, unacceptable.

The committee’s focus so far has been on making sure our members feel comfortable in accepting members of the LBGT — lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender — community, which is by no means a certainty with many of our congregation’s older members.

Discrimination based on sexual preference is misguided and cruel. I’ve always felt that everyone has the right to love and be loved in pretty much the way he or she sees fit. But although I’m fine with the LBG people, I haven’t yet been able to feel completely accepting of the T population, which is, I think, not unreasonable.

Here’s my problem: It’s difficult for me to believe that a person can be born the “wrong” sex. I understand that someone can feel this way, but I think it is more of a psychological mystery than a biological error. Further, I think that someone who resorts to physical alteration of a basic essence is using an artificial solution to solve a personal crisis that could and should be addressed by other means. Cut and paste is for software, not people.

But it’s a personal decision, and one that is so far outside my realm of experience — and interest — that I won’t pass judgment on anyone who takes a step as drastic as surgery. Instead, my concern is in how I will respond to my church’s O&A proposal and if I can overcome my misgivings and go along with the change.

After a lot of soul searching, I believe I can. The decision to change sex is beyond my comprehension but it is also, among other things, courageous, because it’s an irreversible, life-changing undertaking, part of a heartfelt desire for the peace and sense of belonging that everyone deserves. I can’t imagine the turmoil and sense of alienation that must afflict someone who feels so fundamentally displaced, but I have no desire to add to that misery.

So I won’t let my failure to comprehend this anomaly deny a transgendered person a place at my church. We are all, in a sense, God’s children and because I have placed my faith in his mysterious ways I have to accept the consequences. Doing so is confirmation of my faith and the commitment I made to my church’s beliefs.

Gender confusion is only one of the things that divide people from each other. There are already plenty of those, God knows, so I choose to focus instead on the things that unite us, beginning and — if I can manage it — ending with our humanity. The older I get the more I believe that the physical nature of existence is fleeting and essentially meaningless. What we are is not reflected in how we look, but in how we act, think and treat others. Overcoming deeply embedded ideas about sexuality to get beyond the cosmetic — to the core of human existence — in relating to others is a struggle, but one that I believe is worth the effort.

I’ve traveled far in distance, time and spiritual evolution since I was 17. The only true measure of how far I’ve come will be found in my acceptance of others.

This stunning admission is parental heresy in my view, something I — hardly a model parent — would never dream of.

A professed belief in Santa is a duty. My co-worker tried to defend her crime against humanity with some claptrap about basic honesty, the danger of embracing the supernatural and her own twisted upbringing, but I was too dumbfounded to fully comprehend these excuses.

I firmly believe in maintaining and extending the Santa Claus franchise — but not for the usual warm and fuzzy reasons.

The Santa Claus myth is the first intentional untruth most of us tell our children. He embodies Christmas for anyone too young or too rebellious to embrace the religious foundation of this Christian holiday and he adds a bit of magic to the season. But he also serves the unpleasant but necessary purpose of introducing children to the reality that the world is not always as it is presented by parents and other authority figures. By the time they are old enough to doubt that a fat, jolly, bearded old man really rides a reindeer-propelled sleigh and delivers presents to good little boys and girls all over the world in one night, most children are ready to begin processing some other harsh truths, such as that hard work does not guarantee success, that sudden death and destruction are always possible and that circumstances beyond their control can ruin their lives without warning.

These are hard lessons that will sucker-punch children as they grow older unless they’re taught to duck. The learning curve is gentler when the downward spiral begins with the gradual dawning that reindeer can’t fly and that in many states anyone breaking into a house in the dead of night can legally be shot. Even their own parents can betray them, children find out, while attempting to make them happy. It’s knowledge such as this, painful but also instructive, that helps them learn to fly when they are eventually shoved out of the nest.

By dispatching Santa Claus before their children can become attached to him, parents of my colleague’s ilk are snatching away the net that cushions the dive into hard reality. They might as well sit their kids down on Christmas Eve, with milk and cookies, and explain in cheery detail why their deaths, and those of everyone they know and love, are inevitable. They could then segue into killing off the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and even Uncle Sam, if their blood is up.

My wife and I agonized over how to tell our younger son that Santa doesn’t exist when the time came. These days, of course, there’s an app for that, but 10 or 12 years ago it was a face-to-face thing right up there with The Sex Talk, and only slightly less uncomfortable. As I remember, we put it off until we were pretty sure he knew the truth — as we did with The Sex Talk. Confirming a suspicion, in both cases, was easier on his mother and me than being the bearers of breaking news. He took the beginning of this loss of innocence well and was even a little relieved to find out the truth, or at least the latest version of it.

Blowing up Santa prepared my son for a series of setbacks that began a short time later when I told him I’d been laid off from my lucrative and prestigious job. The challenges continued when his case of puppy love was unrequited and with the realization that he’d probably never be a Major League baseball player. But the disillusionment that began with the shattering of the Santa myth had contributed to the awareness that allowed him to rebound from these setbacks.

I told my co-worker that she couldn’t possibly deprive her son of the valuable learning experience that believing in Santa Claus provides, but she seemed unconvinced, even in the face of my irrefutable logic. I thought I was giving her the gift of my insight but she regarded it more as a lump of coal.

So maybe I’m wrong. But, God knows, I never claimed to be a wise man.

I found this out when I caused a minor kerfuffle while doing my part to distribute the bread and juice that symbolize the body and blood of Christ. Five deacons do the serving, four fanning out to take care of the seated congregation and one who attends to the organist and the choir. On this particular Sunday, the organist and choir were my responsibility.

The usual drill is to place the bread and, later, the juice on the organ within easy reach for the organist, then to hand them to the choir so they can pass them among themselves while they are singing. But this didn’t seem right to me. Where is the “serving” part in this, I wondered, and should the choir have to pass the bread and wine among themselves while serenading the congregation? In my mind the answer was no. So I tweaked the procedure and waited until the musical interlude was finished before serving them, thinking they would appreciate being able to participate more fully in the ceremony.

But although there is no hard and fast order of procedure for serving communion in my church, a certain amount of convention is observed, and my slight — although not as slight as I thought — alteration of the established routine hadn’t passed unnoticed.

I had failed, I later realized, to recognize the importance of the details of my church’s — any church’s — rituals. The devil (ahem) is in those details. We’re a pretty liberal congregation and I had figured that a minor change in the procedure for serving communion wouldn’t matter to anyone. It didn’t to our pastor, or to most others, but some of the older congregants were dismayed. The members of my church are united by our wider beliefs — our faith — but how that faith is manifested even in minor ways shouldn’t be tampered with, I found out.

I had better luck when serving as lay reader, another duty assigned to the deacons. The lay reader begins the service by welcoming everyone and extending an invitation for members and guests to join a convivial coffee hour immediately after the worship service. This welcoming speech is printed on a laminated card and to deviate from it would be a serious breach of protocol, my wife warned me after I told her I thought it needed a little punching up (I am, after all, a professional editor).

But I take her warnings in all things seriously, so I found an outlet for my anarchic impulses by selecting a short poem to read to the congregation before I launched into my part of the service. I like the idea of lightening the mood a bit before we delve into the more serious matters of life, death and salvation and how to deal with them.

The first time I did this I selected a poem by Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, because my United Congregational Church is near Amherst, Mass., and Emily is considered to be one of our own. The poem dealt with the glories of summer and it seemed to me to fit with being thankful for our lives on a beautiful summer morning.

After I finished I gazed out at the congregation from the pulpit, not sure what to expect. But Emily’s message had resonated, and I was met with polite applause and a sea (or maybe a pond; we’re a small church) of smiling faces, one of them my wife’s, who was greatly relieved that I hadn’t committed another embarrassing gaffe.

So I’ll stick to the stylized communion dance without alteration; I’ve learned my lesson. But the poetry stays. A beautiful poem is a gift from God.

And that truly is a blessing.

The unnamed Marine is dead and long gone but he’ll never be forgotten. He was immortalized on the day he was accepted into the Marine Corps, which elevated him from the ranks of the ordinary to his eternal inclusion in the few, the proud, the Marines.

I know; that description sounds like a trite, sentimental, over-used recruiting motto. But it’s true, as true as life and as certain as death. Memories fade with our youth and the names of comrades are lost as they recede into the past; but that young Marine’s flame will never be extinguished because of his membership in a fraternity that steels itself for future trials by exalting its past. His name may not be remembered but his identity — Marine — lives on.

That faithfulness — and a certain amount of arrogance — will be on full display on Nov. 10, the 236th anniversary of the founding of the future United States Marine Corps at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where a committee of the Continental Congress met to draft a resolution calling for two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore. That resolution was approved on Nov. 10, 1775, officially forming the Continental Marines. On that day a tradition of pride, excellence and commitment began.

Marine Corps pride is often bewildering to the uninitiated, but it shouldn’t be: Marines are held to a higher standard in everything we do. Our history, traditions and training reinforce those values and forge a pride that lasts a lifetime. And if that isn’t enough, the fear of letting down a fellow Marine or tarnishing the image of the Corps that gave us an opportunity to excel spurs us onward and upward. Being a Marine isn’t all self-sacrifice; we receive as much as we give.

Having something greater than ourselves to believe in is a blessing. Marines know this. In the words of an anonymous Navy admiral: “The Army and the Navy are run like traditional military services. The Air Force is run like a corporation. But the Marine Corps is a religion.”

Amen. And Semper Fi.

With that, our neighbor Tim, who had dropped by to give us our food assignment for the annual autumn block party, smiled and departed as my wife and I waved goodbye with a mixture of alarm and foreboding.

We don’t have an old family recipe. The closest I can come to that ideal is a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips and a six-pack of beer, a combination that’s dear to my heart. But that clearly would not do among neighbors for whom my wife and I at least try to maintain appearances. The block party, a gathering of the seven families who live on our cul de sac, required more. But we were at a loss as to what our contribution would be.

We like to eat. We like to eat well. We have dined at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Italy, at chateaux in the Netherlands, bistros in Belgium, castles in Germany, chalets in Switzerland, pousadas in Portugal, tavernas in Greece and rathskellers in Austria, among other places. In Hong Kong I once devoured a brace of crispy hummingbirds that looked as if they had been flash-seared in mid flight, and in Taiwan I attended a banquet at which I was served exquisite but unfamiliar dishes of meat, fowl, fish and vegetables.

But my wife and I are not fond of cooking. It’s a labor-intensive endeavor that entails, in our view, more work than what the resulting half hour of eating, when we dine alone, is worth. It’s a chore. And we don’t derive much pleasure from cooking for others, either. We appreciate a convivial dinner party, but we’d rather be guests than hosts.

At its best, preparing a meal is high art. I can do the basic things — grill large hunks of meat, pour marinara sauce over pasta, put a roast in the oven — but I don’t have the imagination or flair required for combining various ingredients to produce food that anyone would want to eat. Worse, I lose interest when a recipe requires too much time and effort. That’s when the return (a meal) on my investment (prep time) becomes so unprofitable it leads to a crippling deficit (in my wife’s esteem and appetite).

Oddly enough, I am a devoted reader of The New York Times dining section, which I steal every Wednesday from the woman who sits next to me at work. But my interest is entirely voyeuristic. I don’t get to the city often enough to visit many of the profiled restaurants, and a lot of the recipes call for ingredients I’ve never even heard of. On the very few occasions I have attempted to make one of the featured dishes, the result was a dish that was visually unappealing as well as unappetizing.

I’ve even learned that food doesn’t necessarily have to be good to be good. I had this revelation while sitting in a foxhole on the side of a mountain in Vietnam. My appetite had been sharpened by a combination of terror and hunger and the small C-ration can of the universally reviled ham and lima beans that I ate at dawn, I remember, was close to ethereal.

But there would be no ham and lima beans for the block party. Nor would there be my old bachelor standby dish, a big pot of rice into which I dumped whatever was in the refrigerator — vegetables, meat, fish, soup — or, more often, nothing. The results varied from passable to vile and I could never understand how ingredients that are separately tasty could be so unpalatable when mixed together. But that’s part of my problem; I have no sense of what tastes and textures make an appetizing culinary marriage.

But, as so often happens, my wife bailed us out, by dredging up a memory from her college days — quiche Lorraine; quick, easy and tasty enough to save our reputations, with the added advantage of containing bacon, which all men and most women crave, no matter what they say.

And while my wife was busy shredding cheese, beating eggs and slicing bacon, I slipped out for beer and chips.

These two former fringe players have captured the imaginations and loyalties of a dissatisfied and vocal part of the electorate and cannot be ignored. They are the latest iterations of George Bush minor and Sarah Palin, but with fangs bared. And they have made clear so much that I previously found bewildering.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. But he has been unable to cope artfully with the two wars and the economic booby traps he inherited. I’m not sure that a mere mortal could — maybe Captain America? — and Obama, much to my disappointment, just doesn’t seem to pack the gear. In skirmish after skirmish, his preferred tactic — consultation and compromise, leading to consensus — has misfired.

Perry, on the other hand, is fully locked and loaded. He isn’t afraid to call a spade, or anything that might possibly be a spade, a spade. For example, I was confused about what is wrong with the economy. First, I thought Bush had mishandled it in his usual ham-handed way; then I blamed unscrupulous lenders and irresponsible borrowers. But I’ve come to find out, courtesy of Rick Perry, that the reason is mostly because Ben Bernanke has been holed up in Washington committing treason. Who knew? Apparently, only Perry, who, thankfully, sounded the alarm.

The Texas governor has also discovered that Social Security is a gigantic Ponzi scheme, which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission defines as “an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.” That’s Social Security in a nutshell and it’s astonishing to me that such an obvious scam has been allowed to supply retirees with a steady source of income for nearly 80 years now. Perry will right this wrong, I’m sure, and replace it with a sound investment plan, maybe a lottery of some kind.

Loony ideas like Social Security are the reasons we need the bold initiatives that Rick Perry would bring to the table, such as eliminating troublesome government regulations so businesses are free to do as they see fit, and drastically reducing spending on social programs, which only perpetuate weakness anyway. These corrections would of course create more jobs and let him do away with that other insidious money pit, Medicare. People with jobs will have employer-supplied insurance — probably — and those without jobs will have a greater incentive to find work or create their own, revitalizing a stagnant American entrepreneurial spirit. Fear is a powerful motivator.

Perry’s ideal running mate would be the uncompromising Michelle Bachmann. A more perfect vice presidential candidate doesn’t exist. Her professed subservience to her husband, based on her understanding of certain parts of the Bible, gives her the right temperament for the role that FDR’s vice president, John Nance Garner, a Texan in the no-nonsense Perry mold, said was “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” Bachman would surely change that. Her contempt for opposing viewpoints and her willingness to sacrifice the good of the country to stand by her bedrock beliefs, as she was ready to do during the recent debt-limit fiasco, are nothing short of inspirational.

Bachmann has shown impressive versatility by sounding the alarm on the peril faced by girls who are vaccinated against human papillomavirus, a treatment she asserts can cause mental retardation. She didn’t shrink from elevating a discounted theory to a clear and present danger and her courage in persisting in the face of scientific fact may have convinced thousands of young women to forgo vaccination and instead take their chances with cervical cancer, a more informed and acceptable risk in Bachmann’s view.

She and Perry have further burnished their scientific credentials by banishing at a stroke the controversy over global warming. It doesn’t exist, they tell us. Those shrinking glaciers and the mountains of ice and snow that periodically break off and crash into the Arctic waters are the result of natural causes and can safely be ignored. Besides, the country will be better off when the polar regions are dotted with oil wells. After all, what could go wrong?

I could cite many more examples of their steely-eyed views of reality but that isn’t necessary. Perry and Bachmann are my dream team. Over the past three years reason, analysis, teamwork and innovation have failed to solve the nation’s problems. I’m ready to give rabid, reactionary partisanship a try. Maybe their constant message — that government is the problem and never the solution — is correct. If so, they will be not only the messengers, but also be the proof.

There is no obvious candidate. Other sociopathic mass murderers currently on the world stage, such as Moammar Ghadaffi, Bashar Assad and Kim Jong-Il, have been killing their own citizens, which just doesn’t ignite our passions in the way that violence against Americans does.

Which leaves America without an easy target for its fear and loathing. Absent bin Laden, there is no instantly recognizable face that personifies evil.

And that may not change for a while. Bin Laden’s demise made it clear that notoriety has a price, especially when it comes from attacking the citizens of a country with a long memory and an even longer reach. Planning lethal attacks on Americans is one thing; taking public credit for them has become quite another matter.

So, who do we hate?

Human nature being what it is, the usual targets are those who are luckier, smarter, richer or more famous than the rest of us. In these unusual times, however, the most popular choice is our own politicians.

This puzzles me. Politicians don’t deserve our hate. They are driven almost entirely by poll results and are therefore creations of what they perceive as our concerns and desires. Besides, for all their many shortcomings, most of those who seek political office really want what is best, in their own convoluted minds, for the nation. The inevitable clash of views is cause for argument, debate, discussion and compromise but not hate. Turning on them with brutality is, besides just plain weird, counterproductive and says more about the accuser than the accused.

But rational expressions of our worries and concerns are in short supply these days. It’s just easier to spit out a few insults than it is to actually think. The current hateful political atmosphere, the product of small-minded, sophomoric thinking, lightened for a few days after President Obama’s recent address to a joint session of Congress. But that was an insincere ploy by those of his opponents who heeded poll results that said many of their constituents were uneasy with the confrontational tactics they had adopted. Backing off was merely a bid to wipe a bit of foam from their rabid visage.

Extremist movements such as the tea party, that clan of the uninformed led by the inadequate, still embrace hate-tinged comments and insults to generate publicity and vocalize their discontent. The attention they have attracted has led other Republicans and Democrats at the fringes to choose vituperation over the traditional civility and respect for each other that could lead to real progress. As a result, their unblinking and unthinking shrillness spawns leaders and candidates who stake out ever more extreme positions to generate a buzz.

And who is to blame for this descent into destructive irrelevance? We are, the public.

Politicians are the symptoms, not the disease. They’re just out there looking for jobs like so many other people and will do whatever it takes to get one.

Voters are the ones ultimately responsible for letting a poisonous atmosphere exist. As cartoon character Pogo said in another time and place, we have met the enemy and he is us. We have only ourselves to blame.

The United States is in danger of becoming an ideal that its citizens can no longer attain and don’t deserve. Overheated rhetoric has replaced political discourse and debate has been reduced to an exchange of insults.

Looking for a villain, someone to blame for what you think is the end of the civilized world and Life as It Should Be?

It isn’t Democrats or Republicans or Libertarians or any other political group. It’s us.

And we should hate that.

One of these uninformed soldiers in World War II was a German officer whose men ambushed a reconnaissance platoon of C Co. of the U.S. Army’s 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion on May 7, 1945, at 8:40 a.m. near Wallern, Czechoslovakia. In the skirmish, two Americans were wounded and one — Pfc. Charles Havlat of Dorchester, Neb. — was killed.

Pfc. Havlat is believed to be the last American to die in combat in the European Theater of Operations in World War II.

Some 6 hours before the attack, a ceasefire order had been signed at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, pending Germany’s formal ratification of the unconditional surrender document the next day. The ceasefire had taken effect about 10 minutes before the ambush of Pfc. Havlat’s unit. The German officer in charge of the attacking troops said later that he did not know hostilities had been suspended, and he apologized. The Americans, too, were unaware of the ceasefire.

Charley Havlat was one of three Czech-American brothers, all of whom served in Europe in WWII. Charley, the oldest, was 34 years old when he was killed. Rudy and Adolph Havlat survived the war.

Pfc. Havlat’s designation as the last American KIA in Europe doesn’t mean much in itself; it is more of an accounting matter that puts a neat end to who was killed when and where from the start of the war until its close.

But his death is a graphic reminder of the cruelty of war. It had no bearing on the conflict’s final outcome, of which there was absolutely no doubt at that late date, just as there was no reason for the Germans who killed him to be still fighting. Shortly before that fatal firefight, millions of troops, victors and vanquished, had begun to rejoice that the slaughter was over and that they had survived.

Why did Pfc. Havlat die? No one ever knows why some combatants live and others perish. Fate and chance are the best guess. The tragedy and irony of Pfc. Havlat’s death are that it came so close to the time when he should have been packing his gear for a joyous return home after helping to free Europe from the savage oppression of Nazism. He had been through the worst of times and was no doubt looking forward to enjoying the best of times.

Instead, as he anticipated resuming a life interrupted by the madness of war — and he surely knew how close he was — his dreams ended on a dirt road in his ancestral homeland with a bullet in his head.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t just and it wasn’t foreseeable; but it was war in all its deadly unpredictability.

Sixty six years ago the fighting in Europe ended. For untold millions it was a day of deliverance. But it was also the day Pfc. Charles Havlat was killed — the last American casualty.

In 1980 I was transferred by my employer at the time, The Wall Street Journal, from a small town near St. Louis to New York City. The Journal put me up in a midtown hotel for a few weeks while I looked for an apartment for my new bride and me. After I had been there a week, it was time to turn in my expense account so I could be reimbursed. I was sent to see a man named Bill McSherry, who had been with the Journal for about 30 years and was nearing retirement. He was in charge of “news department services,” which covered a lot of unspecified territory, part of it keeping an eye on expense reports. He welcomed me to New York and asked how I was getting along as he cast what looked to me like a critical eye over how much I had spent.

As I sat there I noticed on his desk some kind of form with the Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor at the top, so I said to him: “You were in the Marine Corps, Mr. McSherry? So was I.”

The effect on him was electric. He sat straight up, yanked off his glasses and stared at me. “You were?” he finally managed to say. “You were? That’s great. That’s outstanding. That’s wonderful,” and he leaned over his desk to shake my hand again.

He told me he had been a company clerk on Guadalcanal and that being a Marine had been one of the highlights of his life. We talked for an hour about the Corps, my time in Vietnam, his World War II experiences, how civilians just don’t get it and many other things. Finally, it was time to get back to business. He took up my expense report, glanced at it again, glanced at me and said, “Well, this just won’t work. You can’t possibly expect me to approve this.”

Oh, no, I thought. I’ve only been here a week and I’ve already screwed up. What had I done wrong? I wondered.

He took out his fountain pen and said, while hovering over the form, “We need to add a zero after all these numbers.” Just like that, the $25 I had spent for dinner the night before became $250, and all my other expenses were similarly transformed.

When he was finished he looked over his work with satisfaction and said, “There. That’s better. That’s much better. Don’t worry about adding this up again. I’ll have my secretary do it. Drop back tomorrow and I’ll have a check for you. And I expect your future accounting to reflect the changes I made in this one. Semper Fi, sergeant. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Bill McSherry is dead now, but I’ve never forgotten him or his creative accounting. Thanks, Bill, and Semper Fi.

Fast forward to 2006. By then my wife and I had two children and were living in Massachusetts. One night, my 16-year-old son asked if he could use my car to “go buy some chewing gum.” I tossed him the keys and told him to be careful. He returned about 45 minutes later and said, as he rushed in the door, “Dad, I wrecked the car.” I thought he was kidding because the car was in the driveway but a closer look told me that he had, indeed, “wrecked the car.” It sat at an odd angle and was battered all over. My son had taken a back road home, he said, and rolled the car, twice, when the tires on one side had hit a patch of deep sand. But he was still able to drive it back home from the accident scene about a mile away.

We called the police and after they interviewed to my son and satisfied themselves that he hadn’t been speeding, no ticket was issued. But now came the hard part: Dealing with the insurance company.

The adjuster showed up a few days later to determine the extent of the damage and to decide how much money I was entitled to. I was asleep when he arrived and when I answered the door he did not look happy to have been kept waiting while I rolled out of the rack.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said. “I have a lot to do today.”

I was hoping that the car, a Honda CR-V, was totaled. I knew that if it was repaired it would never be the same. When I mentioned this to him, he kind of snorted and said, “Totaled? I don’t know. We’ll see.”

As we walked around the wrecked vehicle, he saw the Marine Corps sticker that graced the back window and said, while writing on his clipboard, “Who’s the Marine?”

That’s me, I said. 1968 to 1971. Quantico, Camp Pendleton, Vietnam. Oh, the good old days.

He chuckled and said, “Yeah, you’re right. I was with the air wing in Japan. Swing with the wing, ya know? We had some good times.”

We chatted a bit about our exploits and I could feel him loosening up. He seemed to have forgotten that he had a lot to do and was in a hurry.

After a while he said. “This is worse than I thought. It’s definitely totaled. Our office will call you about sending a check.”

We shook hands and he left. A few days later a woman from his office called and told me the size of the check that was in the mail. It was much more than I expected.

The shared experiences that unite Marines live beyond generations and circumstances. We never know when they will come back to help us. But we can be sure that, eventually, they will.