WATERFORD — When interviewing teenagers on a story, you never really know what they’re going to say.
After arriving in Waterford to cover the April 27 Rifles for Heroes Shooting Competition, which was the senior project of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School students Ryan Bolduc and Aaron Tremblay, Ryan told me he’d enlisted in the Army.
I asked him what job he’d signed up to learn, and he said combat engineer. I knew then that he wanted to work with explosives, but I asked him what combat engineers do, just to put him at ease for the interview.
“What do they do?” I asked.
“Blow stuff up,” he said, which is the typical terse reply of teenagers.
But Ryan took it further on his own.
“Did you ever have plastic Army men, the little green Army men?” he asked.
When I said I did, he continued to my delight, because I could see where this was going from my own playtimes as a child.
“Do you remember the guy who didn’t have a gun?” Ryan asked.
“He just had this stick and you always had him killed because he was useless. That’s the other side of my job. The mine detector guy. Dangerous job anywhere.”
Stay safe, young man, stay safe.
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