I choose to view this as an Opportunity.

And this is absolutely vital.

Whatever the transient monetary costs, you MUST get NATO and 6th Fleet for that boy.


There are few, if any, things in life that will guide that child (and not just the boy, the girl can use this too) as a comprehensive understanding and a mastery of those skills. I am not proud of my ability to shamelessly manipulate any person within my sphere of influence but it is a skill which has assisted me more times than I can count. And that ability was honed in the cigarette smoke filled rooms of our youth trying every conventional means available of stopping 3rd Shock Army from penetrating the indefensible Northern Germany and the Ruhr Valley. (Twice we tried tactical nukes... every time it failed. The same way chemical weapons never really worked out for Warsaw Pact troops... And God Bless Reforger!)

Trust me. I've been in organized sports. I've played a musical instrument with prodigious skill in my youth, and neither have given me the real life Sun Zsu (sp?) advantage that the games Titus mentioned earlier have.

Do you remember the war game we made from scratch with those domino like things? In fact, I think we called it War Game. It was almost as cool as the Civil War board game we made out of those broken pieces of kindling and the scrap piece of plywood. Were we too poor to get our own games? No. The games in the store were too boring so we had to make better ones.