It was just a regular first day of school for me, everything was going great. I met the teachers, liked most of the classes, and even made some new friends here and there. But everything collapsed once I went to my final class for the day, Russian class. Russian class wasn't mandatory, however I still took it because it was the only extracurricular activity that I didn't instantly hate when I first heard it. Being untalented and out of shape, gymnastics and art class didn't appeal to me, so I just picked the remaining option. I mean sure, why not? I said to myself. I get to learn a whole new language, which although it might never be truly useful to me, it would still be cool to brag about. So I entered the fairly small classroom (compared to the rest of the classrooms anyways) and sat at one of the wooden desks there. I waited for everyone to settle down and the teacher to come in, the usual stuff. It wasn't until class had actually started that I ran into some-uh, well, "issues". Everything started normally enough, the teacher wrote his name on the board "Mr. Kovalev" it said in neat handwriting on the whiteboard.
"Hello, children. As this is our first lesson, we will simply start learning the alphabet, see how it goes from there." Mr. Kovavlev said in a thick Russian accent.
He began to write the Russian alphabet on the board and that's when something snapped. This wasn't your usual Latin alphabet, this one was made of entirely different letters that I couldn't understand. It reminded me of something, of another language I couldn't understand, it gave me visions of hell, and to me, hell was Vietnam.
I remembered so vividly cautiously making my way through the Vietnamese jungles, terrified to the core, seeing all kinds of strange plants and other things I had never seen before. I remembered hearing a tiger roar in the distance and wondering just how far away from me and my platoon it truly was, if it was gonna lunge at me and eat me to bits right then and there. I could never get a good night of sleep with those damn tigers around.
And dear god, I remembered the fights, the battles, there was constantly tension, in every breathing second I was there. You never knew when the enemy was gonna attack. I remembered that one time, as I was finally getting some well deserved rest that I couldn't get for weeks, those Viets stormed in and started shooting and throwing bombs. I can still hear those LOUD GUNSHOTS RINGING IN MY EAR. I SAW MY COMRADES, MY PARTNERS ALL SHOT UP AND BLOODIED, SOME BLOWN TO PIECES, OTHERS WITH MORE HOLES ON 'EM THAN SWISS CHEESE. I CAN HEAR THEIR HAUNTING SCREAMS, I WANT TO GO AND SAVE THEM BUT I MUST RUN, RUN DEEP IN THE JUNGLE BUT IT'S TOO LATE THE HELICOPTER ALREADY FOUND ME AAAAH-
Suddenly I was back in the classroom. Everyone was staring at me, perplexed. Tables and chairs were scattered all over the room. Books, papers and other school equipment decorated the floor in a way that it seemed like a hurricane passed through. I looked around, confused as to what just happened, one second I was in the battlefield and the other I was in a classroom. Either way, Mr. Kovalev sent me to the principal's office for disrupting the class. I told the principal what happened and long story short he didn't believe me because plot so I went home.
I was upset but hey at least I got to be home early. My parents were very disappointed so they didn't let me play with my video games for the rest of the week. So there I was, bored, browsing the internet with nothing to do. I decided to just download free games, like the ones you find on Gamejolt and the like. After a lot of browsing I came across this game with some anime chicks or something. It said it was a dating sim, I normally would avoid these things like the plague but I was pretty bored and the game seemed to be fairly well made so I downloaded it. When I finished downloading the game I played it immediately. I saw that the title screen had some Japanese words on it, Japanese people are Asian, Asians remind me of THOSE DAMN VIETS SHOOTING DOWN OUR TROOPS AS WE TRIED TO GET TO SAFETY, GUNSHOTS SURROUNDING ME, PEOPLE DYING, SCREAMING LEFT AND RIGHT IT WAS A NIGHTMARE, A TRUE NIGHTM-
I suddenly was back in my room, my parents shaking me violently telling me to snap out of it. I was confused. Yet again I was suddenly in a war and yet again I was back were I used to be.
"What happened?!" I asked, confused.
"We don't know, we heard screaming coming from your room so we went to check and the next thing we know you're throwing stuff at us and yelling about how you'll get back to base." My mother said with a very worried look on her face.
"I think we need to take you to a doctor." My dad said with a concerned tone.
After about two days or so they took me to a psychologist to see what the hell was wrong with me. The psychologist said that I show clear symptoms of PTSD but that it didn't make any sense because it was impossible that I had been to any war. I argued, saying that I remember clearly how I served in Vietnam for about a year before going back to the US, I told him the many things we did during that year, the horrors and sometimes the interesting things. He straight-out told me that "an 11 year old boy couldn't have possibly been to the Vietnam War back in the 60s, silly." I was offended, triggered, and all of the other buzzwords. However getting offended didn't help anything because they still ended up dragging me to the insane asylum.
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