Context. I graduated high school in May, 2001. I'd been at college for about a week when 9/11 happened. I went to a Catholic high school, and one of our religion teachers was a pacifist. I mean, he was a crazy person who I wouldn't trust with fully functioning adults, much less high school kids, but he was at pacifist.
I was talking to my mom tonight and told her that the religion teacher used to hate it when the military recruited at our high school. I said it was a little ironic because the military was recruiting with, "We're at peace, we're a peace-keeping force overseas," and the teacher was furious. He didn't think the military should be allowed to recruit at high schools at all, must less recruit with the implication that members of the military wouldn't go to war. I told that to my best friend at the time, who told it to her parents, who were both career Navy, and they were all, "Of course we're not at war, how ridiculous, the military can and should recruit that way." About 9 months later, the planes hit the towers and we've been at war ever since. Anyone who joined the military out of my high school class would absolutely have gone to war.
Here's where it gets weird. My mom was baffled by why anyone would join the military and think they might not have to go to war. She was like, "What kind of person would think the military wouldn't go to war?" She always disregards generational differences, but finally I had to bring them up. I said, "You watched the country go through Vietnam at a young age." She said yes. I said, "My generation didn't have that. Me and my classmates were all born in 1982/1983. The only thing we had was the Gulf War, which was barely a war. It seemed like the US was done with full-on war for good. We never saw 9/11 coming." She never even realized that's how we saw the world. I don't usually get hit in the face by generational differences like that. My parents are Boomers. The usual Millennial/Boomer differences are what I normally see.
Notes: I'm aware that this experience growing up in not universal. I'm aware that this is a very white, US-centric story. To preempt Tumblr's standard outcry, this was my experience. This was a lot of people's, though not everyone's, experience. I thought my & my mom's different observations were interesting. I didn't cover everyone or go into the nuance of it, so if I skipped over your particular experience, deal with it and move on.
