nd, really, Dean being the focus of attention and rescue attempt is comedy gold, people. Squirmy and awkward FTW! Maybe, eventually, heartwearmingly squirmy, but before it can get to heartwarming, squirm must needs go through miles and miles of "Oh you did not just say that."
Comedy gold, yes, but I hope it's not too squirmy. I have watch from the hall squirmy issues.
And I think Dean graduated H.S. - I think that was still important enough to John (whether or not John realized it) for Dean to grit his way through.
And I think Dean graduated H.S. - I think that was still important enough to John (whether or not John realized it) for Dean to grit his way through.
There's speculation on the SPN wiki that John didn't graduate from high school. The badges in his journal indicate that he was a rifleman, and apparently high school graduates would have ended up on a different track. This makes me think that even if he didn't put much stock in higher education, he still would have wanted his boys to do a little bit better than their old man.
(I find that the Supernatural wiki is riddled with hooey and bias, so I would take that with a grain of salt. If you want a reason for John not to have finished highschool, you can work with the fact that he was born in 1954, and his Vietnam badges indicate he was there no later than 1971, when he was 17.)
How did he go to Vietnam at 17? Did that really happen to some guys?
Well, I know that people even younger fought in previous wars -- i.e., he would have had to have lied, I think.
How did he go to Vietnam at 17? Did that really happen to some guys?
It is also entirely possible that, as with the writing crew for Buffy, the writers of Supernatural are all English majors and cannot count.
It is also entirely possible that, as with the writing crew for Buffy, the writers of Supernatural are all English majors and cannot count.
*gigglesnort*
Yeah, probably.
Nutty, they cited some of that. Do we have a hard birthday for John? I thought it was speculation...
The badges in his journal indicate that he was a rifleman, and apparently high school graduates would have ended up on a different track.
Yeah, this is hooey. VN era draftees went through Infantry basic before being assigned to their MOS-Miltary Occupational Specialty: cooks, motor pool, quartermaster, etc. Those assigned to infantry went on to Advanced Infantry Training and were shipped off to Nam as soon as their training was done, regardless of their education level. You earned your rifle marksmanship badges in AIT.
It was common practice to give teenaged miscreants the choice of jail or the military at the time, so theoretically, John could have been "volunteered" this way. You could also sign up voluntarily at 17 with parental permission, if you had no job prospects, no plans to finish high school, several younger siblings for your parent(s) to support, or wanted to save for college. There was some choice of specialty for volunteers, whereas draftees were simply sent where there was need, and assignments were marginally better for volunteers than for draftees. All of which are possible reasons for John to volunteer before he was 18.
And Bev comes in with hard facts. (For, you know, those of us who weren't even conceived at the time of the Vietnam war...)
John was definitely staring down the barrel of a blue-collar life, I would guess. I wonder sometimes if his father was military.
