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"Good Lahd John you are SO bad." These are the words that kept running through my head as I tried frantically to clean frappacino off my shirt. You see, I was in the airport getting ready to pick up one of the most incredible men I have ever known and now a small brown stain was setting up camp in the middle of my chest. I was fine earlier, just minding my own business and drinking my frappacino, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of soldiers getting ready to fly to a new base to be shipped off for war. Most of these guys were huge, cut men that looked very capable of breaking my neck with their butt cheeks in one swift squeeze. As I scanned the physical specimens before me, I took notice to a soldier near the back of the crowd. This soldier was different in the fact that he didn't fit your typical Rambo mold. He was skinny, 150 pounds tops, and he wore glasses with a thick black frame. He was sitting quietly, looking anxious and nervous while he was waiting to depart with men very unlike himself. He looked almost scared, and if that someone gave him the chance to walk away, he would take it and never look back. Seeing this made me think to myself,"Oh no, somebody call Al Queda cause this dude bout to do his thangy thang." Now, for the past 3 or 4 years of my life I have taught myself not to judge anyone on their physical appearance, but this doesn't mean that I won't make an assumption from time to time. Its just that everything about this guy led me to believe that if he went to war, he wasn't coming back. It was at this point that I started to notice the soldier's hand. He had a death grip on something like he was trying to squeeze a coal into a diamond. As I pondered to myself what that man was holding, the soldiers were called to their terminal. When the man went to stand up, he lost his balance and dropped the item he was grasping. "Wow", I said to myself stunned as the man quickly picked up his lost belonging. After seeing what the man had dropped, I now understood why he was holding onto it for dear life. It was his life. As he stared at the picture of his baby daughter, he kissed it and slid it down his lower leg back into the safety of his boot. I watched in awe as the man picked up his gear and walked alongside the other soldiers to their destination. I have never been to war and, God willing, I never will. In fact, the only person I have ever truly known to experience war was the man I was at the airport to pick up, my Grandpa. My Grandpa fought honorably in the Korean war when he was younger. I have never really brought up the subject because, honestly, I don't know how he feels about it. The only thing he ever said about war is that, "Your not fighting for your country, your fighting for the men beside you. Your fighting for home." When I was younger I couldn't really comprehend that statement because, to me, home was a place you lived and if you lived in the United States how could you not be fighting for your country? But now that I'm older, I have come to terms with what my Grandpa meant. Home is not defined by where you eat your meals and rest your head. Home is your family. Home is that feeling you get when you go out to eat and know half the resturant. Home is a place where you can be yourself and nobody will judge or criticize you; a place that embodies who you are and the ideals you were raised on. My Grandpa didn't fight in that war for a chunk of land. He fought in that war for me. He fought in that war for my father. He fought in that war to protect his family because where ever his family resided was his true home. So it all began to make sense, I could now grasp the concept of why this man was fighting while everything in his body told him to not to. It was because he wasn't fighting for himself or any material object. No, he was fighting for something much bigger. He was fighting for his daughter, for her love and protection, to be able to tuck her in bed at night, and to watch her grow up. He was fighting for home. As the man slowly made his way toward me, I felt a sense of pride burst through my body. I wanted to stand up and scream in his face,"Your NOT the NOT FREAKING NOT man." Doing this, though, would have either gotten me decimated by his huge friends or thrown out of the airport, niether of which at the time seemed intelligent nor healthy. So I opted for a respectful head nod. The soldier looked suprised when I nodded but he graciously did me the honor in return. I was so happy to be acknowledged by such a courageous man that I smiled briefly after he nodded to me. But then something unexpected happened. The man looked at me like he had just seen a ghost as he passed by my chair. But it was not a ghost he had seen. It was a 20 year old kid dribbling frappacino down his face like a fat baby eating mushed up carrots. The problem was that I somehow forgot that I had frappacino in my mouth when I smiled and it preceded to run down my face, onto my white shirt, and all over my pants. "Good Lahd John you are SO bad." After I cleaned myself up, my Dad and I stood by the elevator to wait on my Grandpa. We waited for close to an hour scanning the crowds of people as they left the escalators but my Grandpa never showed. Just as I was beginning to wonder where he could be, I felt a familiar touch that I had not felt in close to two years. As I turned around to see who it was, I was greeted with a tired, but joyful smile. "Were you looking for someone?". My Grandpa was finally home.