I sit on these park benches and watch the other parents with their kids and I see them doing things I just don't understand, like letting a five-year-old dictate what everyone else plays and then they all just go along with it, and I remember basic training where you learned to do what you were told and you learned discipline or you didn't make it, but I don't say anything because my kids like playing with their kids and I don't want to mess that up for them, and sometimes I feel like a coward for staying quiet, for not saying what I really think, and then I wonder if all those years in uniform taught me anything at all about real life, about how to actually raise a kid in this world, and it just makes me tired.