After high school, I decided to join the Army. I wanted to do it for the same reasons that most guys want join the Army. Not to protect freedom. Not to get money for college. Not even to “Be all I could be”. I wanted to impress a girl.

Impressing girls are the motivation for just about everything a guy does, from washing his car to deciding to kill people for your country. It all goes back to girls.  This was no different. She classified herself as a ‘friend’. That of course, didn’t stop her from dating my other friends. I guess I was a ‘non dating’ friend. I remember her as being beautiful. And I don’t mean beautiful in the way all high school crushes are when you look back through the decades. She was beautiful because she smiled when she saw me. She was beautiful because the pitch in her voice changed when I called her and she realized it was me. She was beautiful. And she was dating my friend.

He had joined the Army before he was even out of school. So of course, my teenaged mind thought that if I joined, she’d immediately fall in love with me.  I didn’t tell the recruiter any of this. I did the whole spiel about the College Fund and getting leadership skills. I aced the ‘ASVAB’, the Military version of the SAT. Aced. The recruiter’s eyes lit up when she saw my score. ‘This is the highest score I’ve ever seen. You’ll be able to pick any job in the Army!’  I began thinking that being in the Army would be great, and I could barely wait to get in.

In the end, I didn’t join the Army. Not because I came to my senses and realized that wearing a uniform won’t stop someone from loving someone else. My eyes were too bad. There was no getting around myopia. The girl ended up marrying my friend. He's still in the military and I still see him from time to time.

The last time he came over I popped in Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360. I figured he’d love it. After coming back from a tour in the Middle East , he’d probably feel right at home with the large selection of weapons, realistic environments and intense action. I walked him through a few of the missions. The AI in CoD4 is great, shouting orders at you, laying down cover fire, making you feel like you’re part of a squad and not just some Rambo-esque figure lugging around 4 guys as dead weight.

When I switched to the online multiplayer mode, things heated up. He leaned forward in the chair, eyes going into a cold stare. Explosions blanketed the streets and he took command of the 7 other players he’d never met before. ‘Clear that building! Don’t come out till you’ve hit every room. You! Hold this corner. Anything moves, shoot. And call out your targets!.’ I watched this guy that used to play flag football with me, level his assault rifle and calmly place three bullets into another player.

Call of Duty 4 has a ton of multiplayer modes. Old School Death Match, Capture the Flag Variants, Free for all, etc. But we were playing Hardcore Team Death Match. Meaning the ‘realism’ is jacked up. You get shot, you’re out for the round. No cute indicators pointing to grenades at your feet. It’s brutal. And my friend, the same guy who was afraid to dive off the high board at the pool, was kicking ass.  Now he was paired up with some anonymous player, probably 1000 miles away. They would cover each other as they went through the level. One shooting while the other reloaded. BAM! The other player’s head explodes and his virtual body falls to the ground. The graphics in Call of Duty 4 are without equal. I expect my friend to hunt down the offending player on the opposite team, maybe using a knife melee attack for extra effect. But he doesn’t. The cold stare that was in his eyes, got a little colder. He didn’t put down the controller. He used it to  look at the body of the guy who he’d been playing with a few seconds earlier.  When he spoke, his voice was softer, more fragile than before. “Hey, you said had a sweet racing game for this right? Lets check that out instead.”.

I switched the disc in the Xbox 360 and for the next hour we barely said a word.

Score 9/10.

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