Stanley stood at the edge of the cliff. He looked at the rainbow. He knew that if he ever wanted to help his Daddy, and keep him from going to war, he would have to do something no one his age had ever done before.
That’s go to war, of course!
He’d always wanted to go to war. Well, that’s not really true. He just knew that if he was going to save the world, like I told you I was going to do, he was going to have to go back to school and learn just what it meant to be a fighter. A pilot. Not just any fighter-pilot, but the best one the world had ever seen. He knew he’d have to do his homework. He checked out books at the library. In his class, he sat at the front of the class and watched as his teacher told him all about enemy formations, and the Treaty of Versailles, and boring stuff like that —
in all honesty, though, he found it really interesting. Stanley was a lot like me. If you ever come over to my house you’ll see Stanley, all gussied up, not much older than me, gently smiling—not really knowing where he’s going, or where the war is going to take him, but with confident, clear, unbelievable dreams that he might just possibly be the one to bring to the world once and ever-lasting true peace: I can only speak for him, not for me.
But since I am speaking for him, and not for me, I’m going to go out and say this war stuff is really really interesting. You get to fly planes. You get to mow down the enemy fighters. You get to stand in the front of lines, looking amazing. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll even meet a girl who’s in to the same things.
And then she won’t be.
“Oh, Stanley, talk to me.”
He won’t say anything.
Austin Diamond 