The screaming yellow is hard not to notice. Wasn't yellow the color the Nazis used to identify Jews? Isn't yellow what people in John Wayne westerns get called when they run away and refuse to fight? 

The anti-authoritarian streak in me finds it quite romantic that my father got a dishonorable discharge. It's a punk badge of honor. I'd never heard about it before until all the paperwork came into my hands, and I must admit I was pretty jazzed up about knowing that my dad had been kicked out of the U.S. Army for insubordination. 

At least at first. I suspect my dad felt it was a punk badge of honor, too. But then he had to live with himself afterwards, live with the consequences. 

He was worried about the effect of this decision to keep among his paperwork a document on the Citizenship Status and Rights of Dishonorable Discharge Persons. I remember first picking this up among the piles of paperwork and thinking "Oh my, was he not a citizen? Could he vote?" I asked my mom, and she couldn't remember. Nothing new there.