Today I peeled an orange and it hit me: the idea that we always cut the tops off the oranges and scraped out the insides when I was in Community. Everyone did it. No one peeled an orange--god forbid, I guess.The question really is: why? Why cut and dig in, instead of peel? Why was this the 'Community Way'?The bigger question is: why didn't anyone ask why? I just took it for granted that I had to do it this way and no other. In a way, it reminds me of today and life and everything going on around in life today: we go to War and no one says: why? We find nothing of what was said to be there, and no one says: why don't we leave? It's nearly 3 years into this WAr of no reason, with about 1700 soldiers dead and over 100,000 civilians dead, and unnumbered ones being tortured in places we do not know but only two. When are we going to ask why?Finally, one lonely Senator, named John Conyers is asking 'why' and what does this 'Downing Street Memo' mean in terms of impeachable offenses of this President. One man. One courageous man. Will someone assassinate him? That seems to happen to good men.No one understands, except those who have been through a culture shock, what it is like to adjust to the other side of life, if you ever get to the other side of life. For me, it took years and years, to put values on things, that in Community, we just didn't do. I was 17 when I entered in the 50's--remember that--and I was pretty much protected from everything. Sex just wasn't part of my vocabulary. Neither was shopping for shopping's sake--we didn't have the money back then. Blue. You have no idea how much blue clothing I still own. Blue was the color of my Habit when I was in Community. Blue was the color of my first jumper I bought when I got out. Blue was my coat. Blue were my skirts. And that was in the 70's. I look at my wardrobe now, and still, that steel-grayblue shows up, as suits, and coats. I am now finally branching out into shades of green--oh wow--after, what, 35 years out of Community?!And so I think of those soldiers in Iraq, in a different culture, fighting a nonsense war, killing people for no reason other than fear because they know they are the invaders, enduring the heat, the sand, the food, the everything different. How long will it take them to really 'come home'? When they are back, will the fear ever leave them?I am of the theory that whatever the dominent emotion was in the time of living the 'other culture', that is the emotion one contends with, for years and years, upon return. For me, it was--do as I was told, do not think about it, just do it. And I still, today, fight to think freely, to ask why, to question, to see things from alternative viewpoints. I fight to do that.For those soldiers over in Iraq, it will be fear and fear let lose, known as anger.It is 35 years after the fact for me, and still I fight on to be me. It has taken me over twice as long as I was in. Is that the norm? Will it be over twice as long as a soldier has been in the service to be himself once more--or will he ever be so?Will I? gh