[Rick Lee]

One of my real regrets in life was not becoming a Marine.

A dear friend, whom you would never ever believe was a Marine, made a believer out of me one day. He is the kind of guy who misses whole parts of his face while shaving, goes to a job interview with dress shirt buttons in the wrong holes, no collar stays, always looks like he just woke up, just an adult version of messy Marvin. One day he came with me to pick up a gun I was buying. While I was doing the paperwork, he asked to see an AR-15 behind the counter. Without even looking at his hands, talking with the sales guy the entire time, he had the rifle stripped down to a million pieces and back together again. That's when I finally believed he had been in the Marine Corps. I don't know what happened to him afterwards or how he made it through boot camp. But he made a believer out of me.