Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • October 30, 2013 When high school was Homer’s ‘Iliad’ The Duke of Wellington probably never said, “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, spent most of his time reading and playing the violin and had no real taste for rough-and-tumble sports. Like most great mili- tary leaders, he was a detached observer and not a rampag- ing bully. The war in Vietnam, however, was probably protracted at my old high school and many like it, where random, pointless violence was such a way of life that nobody ques- tioned why we were buying into a used colony of France until we go stuck there at the eventual cost of 58,000 American lives, the largely wanton death of two million Asians, and our national reputation for victory in righteous causes. This discovery came to me as I got together with a high school buddy who served in Vietnam as a door gunner on transport helicopters and as a perimeter guard at helicop- ter bases. I never got to Vietnam. I enlisted despite three possible waivers -- height, eyesight, allergies -- passed the IQ test for OCS, volunteered for Airborne, and got injured in training to such an extent that I qualified for a medical discharge under honorable circumstances for purely ana- tomical rather than psychological reasons. I felt bad about this for years. My high school buddy offered me expiation. He told me I was better off not going there and wished that he had not done so. The two of us had recently heard from a third buddy, a genuine war hero who was decorated for valor saving a buddy’s life at the risk of his own. He concurred. The concession was the military was full of people who could not think their way out of a paper bag and that we had all been exploited by the same sort of politicians, two generations removed, who gave us the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the recent federal shutdown. How did two guys who ultimately acquired multiple col- lege degrees with an emphasis on mathematics and logic, and a published author who can poke his way through seven languages with a good dictionary, get conned into that kind of war? Two words: high school. The high school we all attended was a place where vio- lence was taken for granted. The metaphor of the bully in the schoolyard expanded into fighting people who were no threat to the United States and better left alone. My buddy remembered his first big fight. He squared off with another guy who had a chip on his shoulder. “He wasn’t as strong as I was, but he was really quick,” my buddy said. The upshot of the instinctive switch from boxing to wrestling was that they fell against the wind- shield of a teacher’s parked car and broke the glass. The teacher looked at the shattered windshield, shook his head, and put the whole thing down to “boys will be boys.” There was no psychological counseling. This sort of thing was normal at that school. The same two guys went at it in the chemistry room two years later. Blood was spilled and a male teacher physi- cally intervened. Nobody called in a shrink. “We had a lot of really bad teachers,” my buddy observed. Our mutual buddy, the decorated war hero, was the king of the brawlers by the time he was a junior. His most celebrated fight took place behind the public library, the usual field of honor. I was in detention that day and missed it. He squared off with a guy who claimed to have a black belt in judo. They sparred and the black belt hit him four of five times. Our buddy then let go a punch so hard that it became a school legend. “I was there and the guy literally did a 360: He flipped over in midair,” my other buddy said. “We couldn’t believe it. Some of us thought he might be dead.” Compared to these other guys, I was a preposterously bad fighter. When I was a sophomore, a guy who had been left back three times punched me in the stomach for no reason whatsoever. I doubled over and I was so woozy that I was unable to retaliate. A week later, I came down with appendicitis and required emergency surgery. Six months after that, the guy who hit me was arrested for grand lar- ceny. He went to where he belonged as opposed to high school. I later fought another guy over a causal and random insult to the point where we were both streaming blood from our faces and fists. We settled the fight by mutual apology and got a week’s detention. My only own claim to glory came in my junior year. A guy who spent all his time lifting weights told me he what he was planning to do to me. When he stepped too close, I caught him just right with a punch full in the face. His mentor, one of the teachers, told him that this would teach him to leave straight people alone. The betting odds had been against me in this fight, and the fact that I was an uncontested winner elevated me from victim to villain. I became a sort of guardhouse lawyer for the hoods, neck- and-neck with the jocks as the favored faction in social life and dating. I sometimes drank more than was good for me, but I never had to fight more than one guy at a time after that -- except once. A few days into the year-end holidays, while it was snowing, I bumped into some guys who hated be because I was intelligent and they were not. The leader of this gang started to slap me around so I got in another lucky punch and he hit the snowy ground. He got back up with foam on his lips, because he was epileptic. After that, I lost big time. While he was trying to stomp on my head, I rolled into the street, through the traffic, made it to the other side after some frantic honking, and shouted that I would be back. I was taking my semi-automatic rifle off the rack at home when my father caught me and took it away. I lucked out in the end. The two main perpetrators soon went up for first degree murder and I had no plausible targets left who were worth a prison sentence. Deprived of their leadership, their gang fell apart. The third member of the team squealed on his buddies to avoid prison and was told to join the Army instead. He died young, but not in combat or in the service. The hangers-on encountered a couple of members of my own faction. They were left unconscious and upside-down in trash receptacles with their feet sticking up. Now for the last battle: Two former friends and another punk, jealous because I was headed for college and they were not, provoked me and then out-ran me. I shouted after them that we would settle up in school the next day. “Did you hear Koster is going to fight three guys by himself?” a hanger-on asked the future Marine, the “bad- dest guy” in school. “No he isn’t,” the baddest guy said. “He’s going to fight one of them and I’m going to fight the other two.” We cornered them and they were so scared (probably not of me) that they started to beat up on each other. We finished the job for them. When you went to a school like this, your buddies were not the main thing -- they were the only thing. Points of honor required you to slug people, and if they stayed on their feet you lost points. This, more than anything else, explained why two of us volunteered and the third did not employ any of his considerable intelligence and guile to avoid combat once he was drafted. That was not how we grew up. Guys who ran out on their country were like guys who ran out on their buddies, and that was not right. Only after experience in college and life showed us what a farce our high school years had been, from the nonsense of hating other towns because of school spirit to the use of bullying to avoid being bullied, did we begin to develop sane values and see personal or national violence as an extreme last resort and not a glamorous and desirable first option. The degrees that landed all three of us in professional or managerial jobs were not fostered in high school. We acquired those educations away from high school, usually after military service which woke us up to the fact that it was not cool to be dumb. I found that both my buddies were proud of their children’s educations, sometimes read serious books or watched documentaries in their spare time, had absolutely no use for national politicians of either party, and strongly advised their children against any con- tact with the U.S. military short of an invasion of the West- ern Hemisphere. Our high school was like Homer’s “Iliad.” The violence started out as vainglory and sometimes ended in tragedy. The rest of life was more like the “Odyssey” -- getting home to the wife and kid(s) was the main goal. The mon- sters, while lurid, were mostly imaginary, so eventually we all made it home to ethics if not to Ithaca. Letters to the Editor Hermansen offers experience Dear Editor: I am writing to endorsement Rob Hermansen for Mahwah Town Council. Rob is only 44, but already he has held office as a Bergen County Freeholder and as a Mahwah Township Councilman (2006-2010). He understands how government works, having served on budget and finance committees at the county and municipal levels. In today’s economic uncertainties, one thing is certain: Rob will be a strong advocate for you, the taxpayer. In fact, Rob has a proven record of success when it comes to keeping taxes under control. While he was a free- holder (2010-2013), spending declined by nearly $1 million, stabilizing county taxes. This was the first time in 20 years the county’s budget decreased two years in a row. Rob Hermansen has the best qualifications, experience, and knowledge to serve the citizens of Mahwah. Look for his name under Column 2, and vote for Rob Hermansen for Mahwah Township Council. Matthew Neyland Mahwah Endorses Jonathan Marcus for council Dear Editor: Nov. 5 is a very important election for our community to fill the unexpired seat of Councilman John Spiech. As your mayor, I have taken the time to speak with each of the candidates. I have found Jonathan Marcus is a thoughtful, calm thinker who prides himself on integrity. He is respectful of different points of views, and strives to bring about good outcomes through mutual respect. The skills, financial knowledge, and expertise he has gained as a corporate transactional attorney working for multi- national law firms, and his current position with a global certified public accounting firm will be extremely valuable to our community. Jonathan has demonstrated a deep commitment to Mahwah. He has attended virtually every council and budget meeting over the last two years. He is a dedicated member of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Budget Panel. He is a member of the township’s planning board and environmen- tal commission. He is an alumnus of Ramapo College and serves as a member of the Ramapo College Board of Gov- ernors. Jonathan Marcus is a dedicated family man, and volunteers in many capacities in our township. With all of these attributes, I am asking for your support of Jonathan Marcus for our township council. I consider him best equipped to serve this community with no other motives other than to speak the truth and serve our residents through his dedication to Mahwah. Please vote for Jonathan Marcus: It is a vote for what is “good” for Mahwah. William “Bill” Laforet, Mayor Mahwah Urges support for Gregg Sgambati Dear Editor: Our town council election is around the corner, and there are several new names willing to bring new ideas and direction to our community. One of those new names is Gregg Sgambati. I have worked with Gregg on the Mahwah Environmental Com- mission for the last four years. Gregg has always been a strong advocate of protecting the environment. He has (continued on page 15)