The British have the Somme; the French, Verdun. However, if the United States Marine Corps Hymn is ever rewritten or updated, right next to the Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli will stand the Battle of Belleau Wood. It was the Battle of Belleau Wood where the newly arrived American doughboys received their real baptism of fire in the Great War, and they showed they had a lot to learn, but they were not a bunch to be trifled with.

The American Expeditionary Force began arriving in strength in the spring of 1918. One of the first battles Commanding General John “Black Jack” Pershing had to fight was against his French and British counterparts. After three years of brutal warfare, the Entente forces welcomed the Americans, but the French and British commanders had their own ideas about how the new forces would be used. To the weary Entente commanders, the new troops were warm bodies who could strengthen the depleted ranks of the French and British armies. General Pershing, however, made it clear his boys were here to fight Germans as Americans, not as fill ins. After considerable wrangling, he managed to keep his units together and the Americans moved into the battlelines to face the enemy.

As part of the Spring Offensive, the Germans were marching hard towards Paris and sweeping the Entente forces before them. On 1 June 1918, however, the Germans moved into Belleau Wood near the Marne River and found fresh American troops waiting for them. Now the French had wanted to retreat further away from the woods and construct a new trench line. The Americans were entirely too stubborn for such a move and instead their commander ordered them to, “Die where you stand!” The mixture of Army and Marines dug fighting holes with bayonets and bare hands and waited for the attack. They didn’t have to wait long.

On 3 June, the Germans conducted a massed bayonet charge designed to break the upstart Americans. The upstart Americans responded by keeping their rifles and machine guns silent until the German advance reached the 100 yard mark whereupon the troops received the shouted order to fire at will. The Germans learned Americans could shoot too as the Kaiser’s forces fell by the hundreds, mowed down by deadly accurate fire from shallowly dug in Americans.

Badly mauled, the Germans retreated to a trench line just the other side of Belleau Wood. The French were nominally impressed with the American show of fighting acumen but now strongly advised the American commanders to withdraw from the field to better prepared positions farther back. A Marine captain who overheard the talk of retreat blurted out one of the most famous retorts in all of American military history when he replied, quite loudly, “RETREAT?! HELL, MAN, WE JUST GOT HERE!” The Marines stayed where they were.

Not content with waiting on the Germans to advance again, the Americans launched their own attack in their sector by driving ahead through the woods themselves towards an objective known as Hill 142. The Marines led the way, but in this instance had let the Germans get the better of them. The Marines failed to reconnoiter the wood carefully before the attack and ran directly into two German divisions who didn’t know they weren’t supposed to be there.

The Americans pressed the attack home with bayonets fixed, but men fell like wheat before a scythe. Still, no order for retreat came down the line and so the attack went on. By nightfall, the Americans held Hill 142 with its commanding view of the battlefield below, but of the two companies who started the attack most were dead, including nine of the eleven officers in the charge.

First Sergeant Dan Daly

On 6 June, the Marines formed up and launched another assault, this time into the Belleau Wood proper. Before the attack, First Sergeant Dan Daly, twice recipient of the US Medal of Honor in other theaters, looked out over the open ground they would soon be marching across. He noted the enemy positions on the other side then turned to his men and encouragingly screamed at them to, “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?” His rallying cry is now part of USMC lore and Sergeant Daly one of the most revered Marines.

It would take more than bravado to win this day, however. The Americans stepped off in tight formation, line upon line and found out what the French and British had been trying to tell them all along — attacking shoulder to shoulder in the face of machine guns was a terrible idea. The Marines lost more men on that fateful day than they had ever lost before in a single battle and the total casualty count would not be eclipsed until the worst island invasions of the Pacific Theater in the Second World War. Still, enough troops made it to the German lines to break through and force the Germans into retreat. By nightfall, the Americans held the side of Belleau Wood nearest Paris.

What followed was nearly a solid month of brutal fighting in the wood itself. Natural barriers paired with manmade entrapments turned the scene into one of attack and counter attack often with intense hand to hand fighting. The woods were often so thick with smoke and mist men couldn’t see each other to tell friend from foe. In all, it would take a total of six major assaults by the Marines at a huge cost of 9,777 casualties, included 1,811 killed, to finally expel the Germans from the wood entirely, but this objective was accomplished near nightfall on 26 June 1918.

America had gotten her baptism of blood and fire on the European Continent.

According to legend, the US Marines earned a nickname from the Battle of Belleau Wood. As the story goes, a captured German officer was incredulous at the way the Marines had fought during the battle and he demanded to see these “teufelshunde”, which is German for “devil dogs.” Whether the exchange ever took place is doubtful, but the Marines have been known as Devil Dogs ever since.

Love y’all, and keep your feet clean.

I don’t write political leaning posts as a general rule. I try to stay as apolitical as possible, for my mental health as much as anything because watching the state of our country today played out on the news is as anxiety producing an activity as one could participate in. Sometimes, however, an exception comes along and I cannot, in good conscience, stay silent. The current situation at the US-Mexico border is one of these exceptions.

Since at least early May, the US Border Patrol, under orders from the US Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has implemented a so-called “zero tolerance” policy to those crossing the border illegally. In and of itself, this policy would not have sent me to the computer regardless of what I think. What has happened as an unintended (I hope) consequence of this policy, however, is the forced separation of over 2,300 children from their parents at the border.

The children taken from their parents range in age from middle teens all the way down to eight months old with fully two-thirds of them being what the government is calling “tender age” children meaning they are under twelve years old. I can say, with proof and without hyperbole, the United States government is taking babies from their families who cannot speak, walk, or in any meaningful way care for themselves.

Factions exist in this country that do not see a problem with this policy. A Fox News broadcaster this morning made the statement that separating families was “not a problem.” His reason? “They aren’t doing this to people in Idaho; these are children from another country.” Of course, he is right; these children are from another country.

I also had a person post on my Facebook feed the self-evident advice of “If they don’t want to be separated from their kids, they shouldn’t come to America illegally.” Many commenters supported him and agree with his assessment of the situation.

At what point did we become a nation that strips children away from their families? When did we start taking infants out of their mothers’ arms? As a country, we have fought wars to keep other countries from doing the exact same thing, and if this were taking place somewhere like China -which in all likelihood it is to some extent — we would see impassioned speeches on the floor of both chambers of Congress and it would not take long before a nation doing something so soulless would — at the least — be facing stiff sanctions from the United States.

Now we are the ones doing the separation.

When did we stoop so low?

Actually, this action is not without precedent in our history. For 300 years we took black babies from their mothers’ arms and sold them without compunction to others. For over a century, we took Indian children from their homes and families and sent them to places like Carlisle Indian School where white teachers tried to “save the soul by killing the Indian” in the boys and girls. We have proven as a country we are not above doing what we are now doing; it hides like bad code within our country’s DNA in places we don’t like to talk about in “nice” company.

The public is rallying behind these children. Pressure mounted so much on the White House to do something that our notoriously truculent President Trump went against his iron-fisted immigration policy and signed an Executive Order legally stopping the forced separations. Yet, when questioned closely, a least one White House aide said, on record, the separations were likely to continue anyway because of nothing less than inertia. The Department of Justice doesn’t seem intent on stopping any time soon.

Even if they did, even if from this moment forward not a single child more was separated from his or her family, what about the 2,300+ who are already in tent cities, warehouses, and former Wal-Marts across the nation? I deliberately avoided the phrase “in the system” because no “system” is serving these children.

I serve in my church’s nursery. I hold babies for an hour or so each week so their parents can worship without worry. Before I get that baby, the parents have to provide fingerprints — which are kept on file — and a photo id to a ten member team whose only job is ensuring the safety of the children we get. Once the parents submit their fingerprints and are identified by the Welcome Team, the parents get an entry slip. They bring that slip to me in the baby room and give me the slip and their baby. Halfway through the service, a member of the Welcome Team comes around and visual checks each child against the entry slips and against the class list they print off once the service begins. At the end of service, the parents submit prints and id once again and are issued an exit slip. They bring me that exit slip and once I verify they are who they say they are, they get the baby back. We haven’t lost one yet in 25 years even though we have had more than one attempt made to take a child under our care.

THAT is a system, folks.

No one in either the Trump White House or the Department of Justice, when questioned about the eventual reunification of these 2,300+ children with their families has provided a shred of a plan as to how this is to be done OR WHEN this is to be done. Keep this in mind, the parents are in detention centers around the border in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, but in many instances their children have been flown or bussed as far away as Miami, Florida; Richmond, Virginia; and New York City, New York. These children in many cases are THOUSANDS of miles from their families. Some of them have not spoken to a family member even on the phone for WEEKS.

These children are in centers and foster homes scattered all across the country like so many feathers from an exploded feather pillow. How are we supposed to believe our government is competent enough to have kept up with every single child over those great distances and has the ability and wherewithal to match each child up with the proper family? Our government loses track of people and things every day. What are the odds of at least some of these children NEVER seeing their families again?

I realize plenty of people don’t see a problem. Many agree, openly or tacitly, with the Fox News anchor who says these are other countries’ children. More specifically, these are brown countries and black countries children, and who really cares about them anyway? I know more than one person who feels the world has too many brown and black people in it already.

What would you do if it was YOUR child?

What if YOUR eight-month old infant was taken from you and sent a thousand miles away in the company of complete strangers? What if you miss their first steps? Or their first words? Who is raising YOUR baby? What is standing between YOUR baby and neglect? Abuse? A pedophile? Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

Ask yourself this chilling question: With things as up in the air and lax as they are at present, how hard would it be for human traffickers to get their hands on many of these babies and small children who some people already think we don’t have to worry about because “these aren’t our children; they are from another country?” We see stories every month of babies snatched by traffickers from their mothers’ grocery carts with the mothers standing right there. Who is going to stop them from taking a child no one is really even looking for?

Call and email your Congressmen and Senators. Get even more pressure on the government to put these families back together while everyone has a reasonable chance of getting back to the right place. Deport the illegal immigrants if that what has to be done, but in the name of all that is holy, put the families back together before this situation gets any worse.

German Stormtrooper carrying the MP18, an early submachinegun.

Since the Race to the Sea ended in 1914, the Great War on the Western Front had stagnated into grinding, muddy trench warfare. Attack and counterattack over small pieces of no mans land had added no appreciable territory for either side. In March-April 1918, both sides were roughly in the same positions they had been in when movement became too deadly four years before.

The main reason for the lack of movement was the lack of sufficient numbers of troops available to storm across the bullet swept no man’s land and land an attack on the enemy that would endure the immediate counterattack. If one side could get a local, massive superiority in troop numbers, theoretically it could steamroll the other side and get movement going again.

The Entente Powers were about to get their massive local superiority vis a vis the numbers of doughboys streaming across the Atlantic Ocean bound for the trenches. Once the human potential and industrial might of the New World landed full scale on the shores of France, a German defeat was only a matter of time. It looked as if Germany was done until a miracle happened — the Russian Revolution and formation of the Soviet Union took Russia out of the war entirely. For the first time in four long years, Germany had what it had hitherto only dreamed of, a single front war.

The end of the war on the Eastern Front made the 50+ divisions formerly used to fight the Russians available for action on the Western Front. Germany wasted no time packing all those men and their supplies onto trains and started steaming west as fast as the locomotives could go. It was a puncher’s chance, but maybe it would be enough. Germany was launching the Kaiserschlacht or “Kaiser’s War” but it has become known as The Spring Offensive.

The Spring Offensive was a series of attacks by the newly reinforced German lines up and down the Western Front, but mainly concentrating in Belgium, close to the original path of attack from 1914. The first and strongest attack was codenamed “Michael” for the archangel who legend says leads the Heavenly Host. On 21 March, a massive bombardment, the largest of the war, unleashed more than 1.1 million shells over a 150 mile front. Then a new type of German unit began streaming out of the German trenches to slam into the reeling Entente lines.

Germany had learned a great many lessons in the four years of the war and one was the value of movement. They, and the Allies, learned that the real problem was movement was one could only go so far before overrunning supply lines at which point the attack would fizzle out and break against a farther line of trenches like a weak ocean wave. The German Stormtrooper units were supposed to solve that problem.

The Stormtroopers were the handpicked best of all the German troops available on the Western Front. They were not going to be dependent on supply lines because they were going to carry their supplies on their backs. The general, greatly simplified, idea called for Stormtroopers to press the attack directly behind the artillery barrage. Rather than rank upon rank of troops trying to storm an entire line, these troops would run through relatively small openings in the opposite lines and fan out in the rear. They were looking for high value command and control centers to attack and leaving the bypassed front units to be mopped up by regular troops coming later.

In a show of force that ominously foreshadowed the Wermacht Blitzkrieg twenty-two years later, the Stormtroopers hit the lines around the Somme River and broke through with precision attacks aided in some places by German armor. The attacks worked. All up and down the attacked front, the Entente forces gave way and were relentlessly pushed back. Once again the German army was on the move and had as its destination Paris. The Germans knew they couldn’t win a war of attrition anymore, but they thought if they could break through to Paris or at least close enough to the French capital for the French to feel the pressure they could possibly force the French to sue for an armistice and Germany could hold on to its territorial gains in the East and the West.

For a time, the plan worked. The holes did get punched and the infantry did follow up. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last for the same reason all the other offensives throughout the war had ultimately failed — the Stormtroopers could only carry so much on their backs and sooner rather than later, they ran out of supplies to continue the surge forward. Once that happened, the lines once again began to solidify. To make matters worse for the Germans, the Allies, once they realized what was happening, would simply evacuate low importance areas along the line and pull back. For example, the British mostly abandoned the Somme territory, giving back what had been won at such high cost in 1916, but which was now deemed expendable. As a result of Allied withdrawals and German surges, the Germans gained relatively great amounts of territory, but most of it consisted of “bulges” in the lines and a bulge required more troops to defend than a straight trench line and Germany’s initial troop superiority was fast beginning to wane.

In the end, the German tide broke against Allied defenses once again, albeit at a much higher tide that the previous four years, but still not as high as Paris. For all Germany’s gains, her army was a spent force. Six months of the Spring Offensive cost the Germans a million men killed, wounded, or captured — men they had no way of replacing. On the other side of the trenches, the doughboys were arriving in force and what they lacked in skill, and they certainly lacked skill, they made up for in enthusiasm and, most importantly, sheer numbers. Germany had lost the momentum and she would never recover it. Now, the next move was the Allies.

Not many more episodes of Great War Wednesday to go. It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since Belgium stood strong, but the last few months of the war would be far from easy. Germany wasn’t about to give up what she had won without a hard fight.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean!

I have been enduring one of the worst stretches of anxiety and depression since I was in high school. Lately I couldn’t cast Expecto Patronus if my life depended on it. The dementors would just have to take me. Budge assures me it is not, in fact, THE worst since I haven’t been hospitalized but I think I probably could have been sent to the psych ward two or three times in the last seven weeks were it not for the fact I refuse to ever voluntarily give up my freedom to a doctor’s whim again. If I am ever hospitalized again, it will be with a warrant, a straitjacket, and several large orderlies. It may help some people, but it just terrified me. So, I’ve been thinking — analyzing my condition and rather than just a single side of my mental health coin showing up, the last seven weeks have been categorized by mental “coin flips” and it seems the coin is always in the air and I have no idea or control over how it lands. I can only hope for it to land on the thin edge because that edge is where normal, calm, relatively happy days exist.

In the process of analyzing my current situation, I realize just how isolating these conditions are. I don’t think people are monsters. They want to help me, but they have absolutely no idea how. It leads to a lonely existence, especially when I’m alone most of the time anyway. Another thing I’ve noticed is how interchangeable in some people’s minds the concepts of anxiety and depression are. While the two are intertwined in many subtle ways, they do have their distinctions and, as the old adage goes, the devil is in the details.

Depression targets motivation and self-worth. When I’m depressed, and I don’t mean just in a bit of a funk, but really manifesting clinical depression, I have a hard time standing up. The first thing I have to do every morning is make the decision to get out of bed. I literally have to urge myself to stand up, cut the light on, and start the day. Depression becomes the “why bother” disease. For instance, take laundry, which we all agree is a task everyone has to deal with unless he is a nudist. A rational thinking person will look at a pile of laundry and she may think, “damn, I don’t want to do this laundry!” However, her motivation kicks in and she begins to think of all the reasons why this needs to get done now as opposed to later. Depression looks at laundry differently.

When I’m depressed, I see a pile of laundry as an insurmountable challenge. I think, “there’s no possible way to get all this sorted, washed, dried, folded, and put away.” Then the “why bother” kicks in, as in, “why bother doing laundry at all? As soon as I get one load done, two more will take its place. It’s not like I go out anyway, so how dirty can these clothes be? I just want to go back to bed.” Then, depression’s second insidious attack begins — self-worth. The laundry sits there in a pile and you can hear a voice in your head saying, “you’re pathetic! If you’d just man up and do this shit when you get a load together instead of waiting so long you wouldn’t have this problem! You know what? You’re right, go back to bed, you don’t deserve clean clothes anyway. People who DO stuff deserve clean clothes. Losers can wear the same things again.”

It’s a devastating one-two punch. First, you have to fight just to get up the momentum to take care of a task only to have your mind screaming at you just how worthless you are for not getting the task done already. It can be about ANYTHING, too. Right now I can name off a twenty-five item list of things that need to be done around the house. Just looking at the list in my head makes me tired which triggers the idea of “why bother?” After all, nothing you need to do will actually be done because grass grows and bushes grow and oil in cars wears out so no matter what you do, you’re going to be stuck. See, a rational person sees these tasks as a part of life; a depressed person sees them as almost punishments and of course you have the peanut gallery in your head screaming, “You bloody loser! You have the worst looking yard in the neighborhood and you deserve it! Losers don’t get clean yards OR clean oil! Just sit there and cry like a baby . . . it’s what you deserve!”

Another characteristic of depression, at least for me, is a seething, roiling, barely contained anger bordering on rage. I don’t know where I heard it but someone said “Depression is anger turned inward.” Whoever they were, they knew what they were talking about. I’ll just sit sometimes and think about throwing my phone through the wall or something along those lines. At times like that I feel like I am a single giant exposed nerve with no skin and the environment is scrubbing me with sandpaper. I’m never mad at anyone but myself though because I always think I should do better, or should have done better. I was a bit of a cutter when I was in high school and it actually was quite soothing, but the world is hard enough on teenagers who self-harm, it’s down right ferocious on middle aged men who cut themselves. We’re supposed to know better.

Anxiety works in an entirely different way. Anxiety is the “What If” disease. A rational person knows if he wants to eat he has to go to the grocery store, but a person dealing with anxiety sees the trip as nothing less dangerous than a trip to the headwaters of the Amazon. What if you have a panic attack? Remember, you had one last time and had to hurry out of the store! Anxiety is usually much more talkative than depression. It’s a constant chatter of “why hasn’t anyone called you? Is it because they hate you? Did you offend someone without knowing?” Sometimes it’s all about the future, “Oh dear, you know what could happen if we do X! We can’t do that! It’s too much risk.”

That’s another difference between my depression and my anxiety. I can only speak for myself, but depression is much more past focused and backward looking while anxiety is almost exclusively future oriented. One way I’ve analogized them is two huge, dark oceans, the Ocean of the Past and the Ocean of the Future and they swirl together in a maelstrom until they crest and break with unendurable force on the Beach of Now. Anything on that beach is going to get crushed: plans, hopes, dreams, normalcy itself, all drowned in a tide of voices.

Depression looks towards the past. Sometimes it can look almost telescopically into the past. It’s not unusual at all for me to agonize over things that happened to me as a child or bad experiences I had in high school. Most of all, depression expertly hunts out mistakes. If you screwed up, no matter how big or how small, a bout of depression WILL find it and like bamboo under fingernails push on the soft, tender spots of your psyche until it bleeds, and it’s accompanied the entire time by the chorus of “you idiot! How could you do something so undeniably stupid! No wonder you’re in such a sad state; you’ve never made a right choice in your life! Just look at all the people you hurt; look at all the damage you caused! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!”

Anxiety, on the other hand, peers into the future and it never, ever likes what it sees. Anxiety also like to do its talking at night. You’ll just be lying in bed planning to go to sleep when you think, “Wonder why my arm has been hurting so much lately? Is that related to why my hand is shaking? Have I got Parkinson’s Disease? Am I going to die? What happens if I die? Who will take care of Budge?! Budge . . . did she check her sugar enough today? Did you make sure she didn’t eat gluten? What if she dies? You’ll be all alone! You’re going to DIE ALONE!”

Sometimes, they team up with depression dredging up some awful pain from the past and tossing it like a downfield pass to anxiety who says, “Ah yes! Remember this bit of idiocy on your part? What’s going to keep you from doing it again? You know every time you open your mouth something stupid comes out? This is just proof. I’m just going to have to make sure we don’t go anywhere or do anything that might cause a repeat of this mistake.” Of course, depression piles on with “That’s right! Stay home! Stay in the bed! You don’t deserve to go and do because you’ll just screw it up!”

Those “voices!” Now when I say “voices” please understand I’m not “hearing voices” in the classical schizophrenic sense. I’m just anthropomorphizing my thoughts. I will say sometimes though it can feel like the voices actually are screaming. It happens at my lowest and when they start pounding on me and I’m in tears and near the fetal position, I have entertained the one way to shut them up entirely . . . but so far I’ve always managed to claw out of such darkness. Honestly though? I never come back from the edge for myself. If it was just me, I’d have punched my ticket a long time ago. Someone’s always needing taking care of though . . . Mama, Granny, Budge – of course. I always come back.

The amazing thing about dealing with anxiety and depression is the amount of expertise you encounter. For example, one of my favorites is have someone say, “You know, there’s nothing really wrong with you? It’s all in your head.” Awesome! Thank you random person or perhaps family member. I have a board certified psychiatrist and a board certified psychologist who would disagree with you, but thank you for letting me know a mental illness is, in fact all in my head. I do hope the irony is not lost.

Another great healing balm is “You just need to get out more and face the world! Face your problems head on!” Again, I appreciate the sentiment and as soon as I uncurl myself from the fetal position and cut the lights on so I can put some unstained clothes on, I’ll get right on that!

The worst, however, is to be a Christian and suffer from depression and anxiety. You get a whole different batch of advice and well meaning helpful hints. Let me just list some of the things other Christians have said to me over the years when I’ve been stupid enough to talk about my depression and anxiety in front of them:

• If you prayed enough you wouldn’t feel this way.
• You can’t possibly be a REAL Christian because REAL Christians don’t have mental illnesses . . . . they’re of the devil!
• If you just focus on Jesus instead of yourself you’ll be fine and it’ll all go away.
• You don’t need all those medicines; prayer is the answer.
• You must not be very close to God. He wouldn’t let you suffer like this! (When I get this one I always want to say, ever read Job, asshole?)
• Real Christians don’t think about suicide because suicide is an unforgivable sin!

That’s just some of the more common pieces of wisdom I’ve had sent my way by well-intentioned believers over the years. It’s not as bad now that I’m in a different church but, no offense, growing up Pentecostal with a mental illness, it’s a wonder I made it out alive.

So that’s it. That’s what I’ve been dealing with the last several weeks. Hopefully you got some information out of it that will help you connect with someone you know who’s struggling with depression or anxiety. Maybe you are one of the brotherhood / sisterhood yourself and you came across this post at a low point. I hope you know you aren’t alone and let me leave you with two pieces of advice that have sustained me through many long dark nights of the soul:

• Suicide, no matter HOW tempting it can be at times, is ALWAYS a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
• It’s ALWAYS a temporary problem because you’ll get past the hump or you’ll eventually die and it’ll be over then, but be sure to follow Item 1.

Love y’all, I mean that, it’s not something I just use as a tag line. Not enough people love each other so when I close with “Love y’all” I’m not just talking to hear my brains rattle. Anyway.

Love y’all and keep those feet clean.

Today is, once again, Down’s Syndrome Awareness Day. In honor of the day and the special people it recognizes, I’m reissuing this post from 3-21-2012 about one of my favorite people ever. Drew is out of high school now and I’ve lost touch completely with him but I hope wherever he is, someone is cleaning his glasses and he is happy because he was a great person and I still miss him.

I’m not at all a politically correct person . . . just ask Budge or spend ten minutes around me, but I am so glad that the term “retard” is now a sure-fire ticket to a PC beat down by anyone around with an iota of sense. One of the things I miss most about being in education is the chance to interact daily with the “special students.”I’m no fool or naive and I know these children can be difficult to deal with at times, but more often than not, they are the sweetest and kindest group of children in any school. At my last position as librarian here in the Upstate, I was blessed to have met Drew. Drew was born with Down’s Syndrome, which is medically called Trisomy 21, which further means he has THREE copies of his 21st chromosome instead of the required TWO. As a result of his genetic condition, Drew has easily recognizable features including a slightly webbed neck and a mildly enlarged, slightly protruding tongue.

Without fail, Drew would come in to the library with the rest of his class after lunch. More often than not, he was sporting a smurfy tongue and blue Kool-aid smile from nose to chin thanks to his predilection for blue raspberry slurpees from the cafeteria. The dark blue of the slurpee stains were a complement to Drew’s sparkling blue eyes behind the glasses that were forever slipping down and teetering on the end of his button nose. Instead of sliding them up his face with a knuckle to the bridge, he would grasp one of the lens and place them back on a more useful part of his face. As a result, his glasses stayed a greasy, smeary mess and I often wondered how he could see out of them at all.

Having me clean his glasses after lunch became a favorite routine of his and if anyone else tried to help him out by clearing away a layer or two of grime, Drew would stop them and say, “Mr. Wham. He clean them in a minute.” Of course, “a minute” was anywhere from immediately to the end of the day, but it didn’t matter. I cleaned his eyewear once at the beginning of the year and that was it . . . I was the windex man.

Meet my buddy, Drew. If this precious expression can’t put a smile on your face, you might not be breathing.

Now somewhere along the line, Drew had come to equate affection with sitting in one’s lap. While I’m sure this was cute and easily accomplished when he was a young fry, by the time I met him, he was about 4’6″ tall and about . . . well, 4’6″ around. He was pudgy, almost always happy, and determined to sit on my lap. Aside from being inappropriate, my poor knees wouldn’t hold him. So, after a lot of wrangling and “no Drews” and even a tear or two, we came to a compromise. He would sit cheek by jowl with me on the couch by the reading center and lean his head on my shoulder while I cleaned his glasses. It was inevitably the highlight of my day.

I miss Drew and the rest of his class. They are all in high school now. Laura works in the library there and she keeps me posted on how he and the rest are doing. So far, he’s not had many bumps in the road, but people tend to forget that he’s a boy in his late teens, Down’s Syndrome or no, and that means hormones are raging. He loves the ladies, and that’s been a matter of work this year, but he seems to be adjusting. I’m glad he’s happy because he always managed to put a smile on my face.

So today is Down’s Syndrome Awareness Day. It’s 3 – 21 – 12, which mirrors the fact that Downs causes 3 copies of chromosome 21. If you know one of these precious children, give him or her a hug for me and help them keep their feet clean.

Love y’all.