A bulletproof vest isn't all that expensive. I know where they sell them around here, the cop supply store that's still got the donut shop sign out front. I'll need to pack a lot of dried food, probably some of those water purifier things. Last thing you need in a war zone is a bad case of foreign microbe syndrome. The nurse supply store is a couple towns over, I can grab simple shit like gauze and catheters there, couple boxes of latex gloves and face masks. Nothing too bulky. I'll need a new pair of hiking boots: light and sturdy with enough support in the ankles that I won't go full-on retard and twist 'em while trying to sprint past the sniper positions on rubble covered streets.
I wonder how cold it is this time of year.
I don't speak the language, but there's some folks who speak English, and I can help with stupid shit like hauling around supplies and changing bandages. And hell, if I get shot that's an extra hour of airtime they'll get on CNN the next day. It matters more when it's non-smudgy people dying, don'tcha know?
Maybe I'll be a hero, and save a kid from a bombed out home.* Maybe I'll find out I'm not terrible at guns and help in more concrete ways. Maybe I can get supplies where they're needed and just not get in the way too much. But more probably I'll just get my stupid foreign ass horribly injured and become another burden. That's what happens to most of them, you know. What's a suburban white kid know about living though a military assault? I don't know those streets, don't know those people. I don't know the food or the culture or the first thing about taking care of myself. I've never even been in a goddamned riot before.
But that's where something's happening. That's where there's something dangerous and real. No padded corners on the playground, no nerf darts, and not the nihilistic risk of "bad neighborhoods" and pointless risky behavior. Fuck getting high. I'm gonna see the world burn. I'll probably crack, come back a broken man, twisted in mind and body from the Things I've Seen. God knows I'm not stable to begin with. The closest I've ever come to seeing a man die was when that cyclist hit the pavement face first, the cameras rolling as blood gushed out of his broken nose like a waterfall: dark and hot and fast. They switched camera feeds when the medics started CPR. I cried watching the Daily Show, ffs. Those newlyweds smiling and waving to the camera a week before the elections, green wristbands proudly displayed. They might have already been dead by the time that hit the air.
I probably won't survive the front lines, but staying home is killing me.
*at this point in writing the CNN notification popped up that evacuation of women, children, and the wounded from Homs has finally begun.
