The day I decided to become a terrorist

[Syzygy321]

I really wasnt planning on it.

I flipped open my parents' Newsweek. It was a boring afternoon and light slanted through the dusty curtains and made an ugly pattern on the floral sofa. My father was stomping angrily in the kitchen.

The magazine fell open to a photo of a man with a big black beard. I didnt watch the news or follow international events. I had never heard of him. It took about five minutes for him to hijack my whole imagination.

He lived in a foreign jungle. Everyone in his land knew his name. A troop of loyal men followed him. He was so daring that he had once taken half his government hostage. He was obviously made of noble stuff: he was fighting for...well, something or other. Something important, like justice and poor people. Poor people were in trouble, and he was their champion. He was a rebel. (A real rebel; not like me, who did a little shoplifting sometimes just to prove to myself I had the guts.). He had fought for one side, and then (mysteriously) switched and fought his own guys - because they were doing the revolucion wrong. Or something. Something heroic.

I was a middle-class teenager with good grades, a few friends, a goody-two-shoes reputation, an undercurrent of disharmony, isolation, and threat in my suburban home. I wanted to make a splash. Do something amazing.

Mostly I wanted to stop being boring and unnoticed. I had glory in me, and I was the only person in the universe who knew it.

I started to lie awake at night imagining my future. It would be like the heroic stories I loved. I didn't look like much, but I would surely turn out to be strong as Achilles and wily as Odysseus. We would live like Robin Hood and his band of misfits - and I wouldn't be just "the girl", stupid Marian; I'd be a medic, I decided, a tough guy, an admired hero. I thought of what I'd be leaving, too: math class, French class; all the kids at school going, "She did WHAT? Her? We never knew she was so interesting."

***

Not so long ago, boys ran away to sea. Some lied about their age and joined the army. In the Civil War, a few girls enlisted in drag. Farm kids have always run to the city. Kids with dreams run to Hollywood. My aunt, at 18, left her stricken family and took a bus to NYC because she thought she could make it as a ballerina. (She didn't but she married a millionaire. These things happen sometimes.)

I went to the travel agency on the corner. I went more than once. I said I had a pen pal in Managua. The travel agent had a big smile like a shark.

It turned out I could cover the cost: i had babysitting money, holiday money. I had always been the kind of girl who saved and saved and never spent.

It was the logistics, in the end, that floored me. How would I buy the ticket? When I got off the plane in Managua, how would I find my way to them? What if they didn't accept me? What if I had to come home in disgrace and face my family and be a failure in front of everyone?

Now I read the news about kids who make such journey. And I think, what if:

-- What if i could have contacted my hero and his men via the Internet?
-- What if they had told me the cause was just, and I was wanted - even needed --there?
-- What if they wooed me for months, tapping to find my secret hopes and promising me everything I dreamed.
--What if I were susceptible due to religion?
-- What if they promised to meet me at the foreign airport and usher me into my glorious future?
-- What if this was something other kids like me had done, and done successfully?

I keep reading articles in which parents and politicians wail and say, "Why do they do it? Why ISIS? What are they thinking?"

Me, I think I know.
And - aw c'mon, guys. Don't you remember being fifteen and having dreams of glory?

I'm curious what the rest of you think.