Robert

So Mark spends a period of time just kind of living for months on like the edge of maybe going into battle, but he never gets to like consummate this act that really does seem to mean a lot to him.

And this, this act,

The fact that this gets interrupted, that he never gets his baptism of fire, is going to bother him the rest of his life.

I get the feeling he never fully gets over not being tested in this way, and he seems to really want that.

I've met a lot of guys like that over the years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I... They want it so much, they enlist as, like, infantry dudes, and then they end up on, like, a massive forward operating base that might have a rocket fired at it, and they want to sound like the most high-speed Green Beret-ass motherfucker for the rest of their life.

And they probably wear hats about where exactly they were stationed in Iraq or whatever.

Yeah, like, Camp Liberty, like, that's the lamest...

Fucking shit.

My favorite was Cold War veteran hat I've seen.

That was a classic, man.

That's like the ultimate dude who never did shit.

Yeah, I love it.

It's like I feel I feel like I have a level of understanding because like there is our society does like idolize the experience of being a combat veteran to such an extent for young men that like I get why he's obsessed with this.

Of course he is.

Right.

It's not an unfamiliar thing.

And, you know, I'm not like no one's.

Like very few people are immune entirely to that feeling of like, oh, there's got to be like something to this experience that's like special and powerful.