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Graham Christenson
On Nov. 11 each year Americans celebrate Veterans Day. This holiday holds the purpose of honoring and celebrating all those who have served in the military.
This is a fairly basic explanation of the holiday that the majority of people understand.
However, today in English class we were presented with the question, “What does Veterans Day mean to you?” This is a very common question that people are asked on Veterans Day. Yet, for some reason, I’ve never thought too much about what Veterans Day actually does mean to me.
If you were to have asked me this question before today, I would’ve most likely given you the standard answer of, “It’s a day to give thanks to veterans and their service to our country.”
But, you see, the problem with this response is that our daily writing must be a minimum of 100 words and as you can count my response is only 14.
So, I pondered this question a little deeper and while doing so I hit a roadblock. All I could think of to do with Veterans Day was the school’s Veterans Day program and the people whom I’d never met before who fill the gym. Specifically, the veterans who I viewed to be nothing like I am. People who I looked at as being completely different than I am.
And in this thinking, my mind, strangely enough, started piecing a memory together -- a memory from just that morning. Even stranger, the memory was of a tweet I had half-sleepily read as I had mindlessly scrolled on my phone. So I went on back to my phone to find the tweet again.
The tweet was from Charles Noyd (@CharlesNoyd) and it read:
“When you see the old guys at the Veterans Day program, remember that they were once the scholars, athletes, musicians, actors, etc. at their high school.”
Something about this flipped a switch in my brain. I realized that I’m not much different from how the veterans sitting in our gym were when they were in high school. People who were just like me decided to serve our country and sacrifice so much so that we can live the way we do.
And when realized this, I felt so extremely grateful for these veterans and their service. They did something I’m not sure I could ever do, in order to protect our country, and that is truly amazing.
So, firstly I’d like to thank Mr. Vrana for a writing prompt that made me think deeply about the meaning of Veterans Day. I’m not sure if he will ever read this, but thank you to Charles Noyd for opening my eyes to how veterans are so similar to you and I. But, most importantly I’d like to thank all the veterans for their courage, sacrifice, and service. The world is truly blessed by what you have done.
Thank you.
GRAHAM CHRISTENSON is a sophomore at Aurora High School and a guest writer for the Aurora News-Register. He can be contacted at graham.christenson@4rhuskies.org.
