Renegade Robinson Creative Writing

The Renegade Robinson

“War is foolish,” My Dad said over his newspaper one night, glasses pushed to his nose. “Don’t you boys get caught up in all this patriotic excitement. You’re going to become doctors and lawyers, not have your guts scattered across three countries

These words of wisdom were spoken to us in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks. After this historical event, the people of our country seemed to go into a frenzy. American flags spontaneously appeared overnight, and now you could not step outside without seeing one in the lawn’s of every neighbor. People lined up down the streets, and overflowed recruitment offices trying to enlist. Patriotic songs played non-stop on the radio. In town, the only topic of conversation was the war. Everyone talked about war. The men, the women, the old ladies in sewing circles, the children who played hopscotch outside the ice cream parlor, the convicts, the mentally ill. War was on everyone’s mind.

Everyone, that is, except my father.

While he believed in hard-work, education, and religion, I liked to take life as it came at me. I was more hot tempered and combative than him, and he stopped at nothing to try and coerce me into being like him. When I was 16, a friend of mine had tried to make a move on my girlfriend. Naturally, the only thing to do was enter his home in the middle of the night with the intent of inflicting physical harm. Unfortunately for me, his high-strung mother was at home and dialed the cops. Breaking and entering was placed on my previously surprisingly spotless record sheet. My father, being the clean-cut, hardworking man he was, somehow managed to get it expunged from the record. He had then tried to take me under his wing and teach me banking. But a 17-year-old hothead like me doesn’t take to banking lessons so easily. I quit after the first week. He yelled at me for wasting my life, and I yelled at him for wasting my time. We just didn’t get