A serious misunderstanding

Everyone knows someone that's either been deployed or will be deployed to Afghanistan because of the war.

Our youth minister is currently serving his second tour. The senior deacon has done a tour as well as a couple of members' sons and daughters being deployed.

Obviously these soliders are always on our prayer list. All of the soliders are on the prayer list of the church.

Since meeting J.T. (let's give the current beau some identity) I wanted to be a more active citizen. He's been deployed three times, each time for at least a year, and is constantly saying how nice it is to hear from folks back home.

I am by no means a stranger to having friends and/or relatives participating in a war. In 1991 when my daughter, Courtney, was coloring her heart away in kindergarten, her father was a Marine doing battle in the Gulf War. So were several of my cousins and high school classmates.

As I enjoyed the comforts of my apartment during my senior year at Jackson State University, Derrilyn and I watched the battle unfold. She's watching on her television, I'm watching mine, we're both lying across our respective beds yelling back and forth.

We were simply amazed at the amount of fire power taking place. I remember her saying "It looks like a fireworks display. It's like the freaking Fourth of July."

By the way, her then brother-in-law Micah was a solider in that same war.

We questioned whether or not it was necessary, as many of us are doing with the current war. We wanted to know how many men or women would have to die, as most of us are asking today. More importantly we were active with our loved ones overseas.

There was no internet. No webcams or any of this other fancy stuff we have today. We communicated the old fashioned way - we wrote letters. We mailed care packages and we wrote more letters.

So in listening to J.T., I thought "why aren't I that active now?" It might even be easier with all this modern technology. I want to send someone a care package!

I mentioned this to J.T. and he thought it was a good idea. He also warned me not to be disappointed if wives weren't very enthausiatic with the idea and that deployed husbands might get the wrong idea.

I thought, surely no one will care if I ship a care package to send their husband, wife, son, daughter, or whomever. I mean they will have to give me the address! And as for the men getting the wrong idea, I thought why would they? If I was interested in anyone romantically, I certainly wouldn't have waited for them to leave for war to express it. Not my style.

Low and behold I take my idea to one of the individuals from the church. I expressed my desire to be more active, "I feel a need to do something....blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. Please call me with the mailing address." She seemed very pleased with the idea, even suggested some items. I thought GREAT! "I knew he didn't know what he was talking about."

The call never came and I never asked again. Had she recommended I send him a set of encyclopedias I would have, that how's amped up I was about performing my civic duty. Plus it was the holiday season. I wanted to send a "hang in there" note and more importantly, I wanted to send a care package!

Needless to say I was disappointed but maybe next time. So a couple of weeks pass and my son, Cody, comes home and tells me his barber is being deployed. I was on it like a pit bull. Get me an address, we're sending a care package.

Of course he's 16 so that never happened. However, I did track down a email address and with that I was off and running.

I sent a very basic email. "Hi, hope you don't mind my writing just thought you'd like to hear from a friendly voice back home. Nothing happening in the sports world. Cody won't let anyone else cut his hair, I don't know what he's going to do about the prom"....that was the gist of my message. Seriously.

The next morning I had a response. Great! It starts out super fantastic. Talking about everything from the atmosphere, to why he's there (as part of a clean up crew), when he's returning home and the stench.

Then it takes a turn that left me thinking WTF?

"I've always wanted to get with you. I've always thought you were a beautiful woman. You're cool, down-to-earth, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada."

WTF was that? This was sooo not my intention. No. 1: you're married. No. 2 you're married. No. 3 you're still married. Can I just speak to a brotha? Can't I just be nice? All I could do was exhale!

How do I respond to that? Should I EVEN respond to that? Way to much thinking is now going into something that was suppose to be an act of kindness. I don't need this occupying space in my brain, I have enough clutter up there.

I feel as if I'm back at square one because I certainly wasn't trying to send that type care package.