Find an inviting armchair, recliner, or that familiar sofa to lay back on. Get comfortable. Relax. Let your eyes fall lazily on this curving black ink.

Good. Now, where are you?

Wrong. You are not at home. No, not work either. You are nowhere near home, your family or friends. You are in the middle of a long, lazy night’s dream. No. You are not. You are wide awake. It is that incessant ringing of that phone that awoke you. What phone? There is no phone. Even if there was, how on earth would you know? You are blind and deaf.

The ringing refuses to stop, so get up and grope for the wire of that vexatious phone and pluck it out of the wall that feeds it. Then, again, do not bother. The stumps of what used to be your legs are not even long enough to kick off the sheets that cover you, and when they amputated your arms, the doctors chopped off half of your shoulders, as well.

Now there you are barely a shadow of a man. Tell me, how does it feel?

You never answered my first question. Where are you? In a hospital; that part is obvious. What city? What country? All you could do is guess at that one, too. All right then, what time is it? What day? Month? Year? You have no idea. Then what good are you?

Nothing?

Bull! There is nothing wrong with you. You are a victim. We both are, victims of war. Both of us? you ask.

Yes. In the god-forsaken trenches of the Great World War. I lost my arms. my legs, my eyes, and my ears. An explosion blew a whole in the part of me from which I once breathed and ate. Now I breathe through a machine; I am fed through a tube. It took me two years before I could tell the difference between day and night. During that time I struggled to communicate with the world around me--tapping, tapping, tapping. But no one would listen. What a world! What a life, so close to death.

Look up from the page.

Wiggle your toes.

Stretch out your arms. They are still there.

Take a deep breath; in through your nose, out through your mouth. Do you remember what you had for breakfast?

Be grateful. I could do none of these.

You have just been drafted. Say “NO!” and run like hell. Unless, of course, you like what you have just read.