A BOOK ON U.S. APPLICABLE LAW
Deacon San Nguyen
MORE SWEAT IN MILITARY TRAINING, LESS BLOOD IN BATTLE
As everyone already knows, all soldiers, from a Private to a General, have to pass many training courses at Military Training Schools. At those training institutions, soldiers are trained on bodily and spiritual endurance, military laws, tactics, and Esprit De Corps. With the experience gained from training school, soldiers bravely get into battle fields neither hesitation nor fear of Death. Thus, there was a saying: More sweat in military training, less blood in battle.
In this article, I want to mention about the training within families where parents teach their children how to deal with the surrounding society when they leave their families for their own life. In order to become good citizens who are capable to do anything that they like, the children must learn hard from their parents. Family is like military training. If the parents teach their children well enough, the young ones will be successful greatly.
I tell you a story about a young female inmate who was just about twenty year old but received a sentence of six months in jails plus one year in probation because she was a peddler who sold heroine in the market.
This is her story:
Many of my friends thought that I was lucky because I lived in a happy family where my parents cared for me a lot. That was totally wrong. Indeed, my family was a place where all problems could not be solved. I was the one who suffered a great deal from my parents’ daily quarrels. They used dirty language to scorn each other. I was not allowed to tell anybody about that. If I did, I should be scorned terribly. They roared at me with such attitude as if they wanted to kill me immediately.
I knew that, at first, my parents were very happy. However, when I turned 10, they began to argue strongly. My dad was an alcohol addicted. Whenever quarreling, my dad asked for a divorce. He usually said that he would divorce my mom the next day. He also asked me to see in case of a divorce, between Dad and Mom, whom I would follow.
My mom was a devoted Catholic. My dad was a Buddhist before marrying mom. He then converted himself to Catholic. Then, few years later, he quit Catholic. This is the big problem for my mom because she always went to church every Sunday and prayed every night before bed. Due to the religious differences, my parents argued with each other frequently. Realizing that I was at my mom’s side, dad ignored me, especially when I was at my junior and then senior years in high school. For two consecutive years, my dad did not communicate with me much. During that time, my mom was very cautious with my dad’s illegal relationship with some other women and argued with my dad more and more. Although my dad asked for divorce many times, my parents still lived under the same roof because my mom never accepted a divorce. As I said earlier, my mom was a devoted Catholic, she could not bear the idea that someday, she would have a divorce.
However, regardless all family problems, I had to do all the chores in my family as instructed by my mom: going to church every Sunday, praying before bed time, cooking dinner for my parents, washing dishes and putting them in order, cleaning kitchen, washing my parents’ clothes, folding their clothes separately, Mom’s at mom’s room, Dad’s at dad’s room. Besides, I had to volunteer to teach Vietnamese language for young children at church school every Sunday. I could only watch TV at Friday and Saturday nights. At exactly 9.30 p.m., light in my room must be out.
I did all those jobs well because my mom said, “As long as you live under my roof, you must follow my rules”. Nevertheless, there was one thing I could not follow: My personal Love. When I went to college, I had a boyfriend. Once, my mom saw me walking hand in hand with my boyfriend, she angrily yelled at me and forbid me going on with my boyfriend. That was too much! Regardless my mom’s disappointment, I still sneaked out to meet my boy friend at least once a week, then, when my love was overwhelmed, I left my home and lived with my boyfriend as a couple of husband and wife.
However, after moving in with my boyfriend, I just recognized that he was an addicted to heroin. He already did that since he was at 11th grade. As my mom usually said “standing near the ink, you should be black, standing near the light, you should be bright”, I was affected by his addiction and then, I smoked with him. Due to lack of money to buy heroin, we became peddlers who sold heroin, too. Then, we were caught. Luckily, we did not carry much heroin and because of our records shown that we were clean, we received a light sentence that was 6 months in jail and one year in probation.”
As you know, in Oklahoma, the law stated very clearly:
“Whoever sells of contains heroin will be fined from $1,000.00 to $500,000.00. Violation of each section for each count of the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act, depending on the volume of heroin he carries, the time in jail will be from 1 year to a life.
For a conclusion, this story shows that if the parents treat their children as hard as in a military training institution, their children may run away, do bad things, and become detainees in jails. There was an old saying: “A day in jail is years at home.” Pity for him who has to face a judge at Criminal Court.
