Part 2
The Musketeers 20th Anniversary
© Sharyn Pierot 2/2010
Now, after twenty years of watching, listening and yes, having some woman-emotion-hormone- driven conversations about ‘computer-time’, I ever so slowly begin to understand.
From Air Warrior to Fighter Ace to Aces High, The Musketeers have stayed together, come, gone, and come back again. Setting up technology, as it was developed, to work in favor of their community by creating web sites and listservs, as beacons, so all the members of their squad could find their way home.
So many of you have remained, through all the surprises life has thrown at you. Saturday night, squad night, sacrosanct. The Musketeers gathering more than any family I know. “One for all, and all for one.”
I cannot understand what it’s like for you. Being a woman, not a gamer, and not having my own tribe. From over here, on this side of the computer screen, this is what I know. You have created a squadron-tribe of men. You re-create the aggression and expert skill of the hunt, in the form of banding together to bomb, blow up and destroy. You don’t like to play dirty and won’t play with other squads that do. It’s okay with you to leave when it gets down-right mean.
The teamwork and strategy, in the way of men working together to set up the shoot, is integral to your game. You don’t needlessly go assassinate people and things. You sometimes allow yourself to be chased, sacrificing the kill to your squad-mate, and sometimes you finish off the kill yourself.
You get shot down. You land. You go up again. There is frustration, keyboard pounding, colorful, and unique verbiage, when you don’t land your kill. But, there you go, up once more. The game’s the thing. Like life.
I hear how you rally with each other. Through strategy, timing, and that odd thread of humor and merriment, you set yourselves up so the team win is the goal. At the same time understanding you’re each invested in being the best player you can be. A synthesis of working together and entirely personal. Exclusive to your squad, I think.
I love (is that too girly a word to use here?) how you offer personal and emotional support to each other. Your kind words of empathy when one gets divorced, a dog dies, a wife is ill, and a parent passes away… “Oh man, that’s too bad”, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Then you sing a Monty Python song, poke fun and make parodies of movies you’ve all seen, find a cluster of opponents on another field, and shift away from the difficult emotions, with “let’s go that away!”
You are familiar with the art of the war you’re in. The personal squad to squad vengeance's and vying to be the best team. You watch your enemy; know their moves, tendencies, and ways. You communicate how they work together and how you will work together to defeat them.
You are men of honor and men who go for the kill regardless of who is in their way. Ruthless men. Supportive good men, who circle round your squad mates with a kind word or two before you fly off to destroy the enemy. Men who give serious thought to and mercilessly practice your skill. You sing together late at night. Banter and spoof. All and any humor is practiced with regularity.
I don’t pretend to understand how it happens, but I see the effects. A release from the pressures of work and responsibilities. A place to hone your skill at something meaningful to you, to be the best you can be, without anyone’s life, family, and mortgage depending on it. A twenty-year solidarity based on common interest, play, fun, and, importantly, commitment to the team.
You each have a personality trait of goodness. “We only accept good men, not necessarily good fighters”, Rapier told me. If I met you, I would trust you.
You’ve built a belonging place. A squadron of welcome-home without question, even after silence and distance. It’s your club house, your camp fire.
Musketeers, you are amazing men to me!
I think of The Musketeers military air combat squadron as a Native American hunter tribe. A way for men to be in community with each other that is not found in our society of corporations or man’s relationships with women, who want it softer at home.
That night, I heard my son with his two buddies. He encouraged them to try again when they were shot down and discouraged. Gaz taught them by example, to laugh, when he was mistakenly shot at by one of The Musketeer’s squad mates.
I heard the tone of his voice and it’s inflections as he guided and supported his friends as they joined together on a mission to hunt, destroy and kill.
All his life, my son has heard this one-sided conversation between his dad and The Musketeers. He has heard this twenty-year comradeship build and grow close with serious missions, jokes, and songs. Now, he himself has begun to enter his own manhood.
He has heard empathy and sorrow over divorce, death, unemployment, and family illness. He has listened to how men share words of commiseration that last long enough to be heard, appreciated and acknowledged.
He listens to one voice as the squad plans an attack, warns of an incoming group, is supported and takes the role of supporter, during a mission, as well as life crises.
He has seen his father be at the top and the bottom of the score board.
With the exception of a few short years when the game, but not the squad, faded into the background of our life, The Musketeers have been a constant.
Now, as he joins your squadron-warrior-tribe, I know, without a doubt, my son has left my arms. He has gone to join the men on their hunt. And, I, mother, see he has learned everything he needs for his own journey to manhood.
He learned it from his father’s voice and the invisible, yet always present, squadron-tribe of Musketeers, who have been teaching him all his life.
Each of you has contributed a piece of yourselves to the man my boy is becoming. You have been, and continue to be, the words of the lullaby and bedtime story he falls asleep to.
