Children.

I'm David Hoffman, filmmaker, and I shot this clip as part of a work I was doing toe look at various Christian organizations and how they were helping very social situations.

So I'm going through ST Louis.

I hear about this and I go to this little adventure about the watch and what you're seeing was shot in 1989.

So these Children were teenagers and young adults.

They're much older now, and I don't know what happened to them, but the feeling you get from them so touches me as a baby boomer as a person who lived through the Vietnam War, had friends in the Vietnam War.

Um, a feeling of responsibility, I don't know.

What do you think has has anyone else here noticed that if you sit through like a combat movie about Vietnam like platoon, I know if I sit through, I watch it.

I start, I begin to have the characteristics I really do.

And when the movie is over, I am.

I've got one badass that I I should say, and my mom, my mom told me I don't want to watch that movie when you're here.

I said Why?

She said, Because you act like a vet when it's over with.

I said, Mom, I relate to it.

Well, hell, you know, because of Dad, you can you go out and buy a car, you know, d'oh!

And but I've noticed that.

And if I watch you a full metal jacket that's not as bad as Platoon.

But if I watched Platoon, it's like it's like I am there.

You know, Platoon Platoon is like one of the best movies.

I think that was made about Vienna in the movie.

Well, this may sound sick, but I would say, uh, Sergeant Barnes, that I mean the really nasty one.

Because for some reason, the first time I saw the movie, I really felt for the man because here he is with all these scars.

And he is a hard asked veteran, and he's done three tours and he's just, you know, and you can you can look into the man's eyes and no, uh, that he's got so much down inside here that he's not gonna let out and he'll never let out.

I walked out the first time of Southern.

They walked out of the theater and I felt probably everybody else, like you had been in the bush for two weeks and it was that intense.

I've been wondering about something.

You know, you guys are all, uh, kids of we divert rooms.

Onda.

A lot of kids aren't, uh, have you noticed all that?

Uh, you're treated differently.

You'll feel differently because you are.

The kids have a lot of kids.

They will, you know, they'll be naive.

I mean, I remember 13 years old.

I felt like I was 17.

Ah, a lot of kids were naive, like it's now.

I'm gonna grow up.

I'm gonna have this beautiful house.

That's beautiful.

Answers like, No, you're not.

And, uh, you know, I just I just felt that even though I got the grades I got which weren't that great, you know, I felt that I was ahead of them as far as maturity was like Lisa said, I feel like I'm compared to, um the rest of my peer group even is that, um I feel older than their maturity wise because I've dealt with a lot of stuff, you know, that they've never even, you know, thought about having to deal with.

So it's not just the fact that your step dad was in Vietnam, but it was a way he treated you.

Mmm.

Is that the idea And my mom to with him?

Nobody.

I mean, nobody could do anything, right.

You do something that's, you know, good.

It's not good enough.

You do something wrong, you really get in trouble for it.

He scream and holler, and no, he was never actually, uh, physically assaulted was a Not toward me.

He's only He only hit me a couple of times, but every night talk about two in the morning, my he would chase my mother around the house.

There are things that are debater.

He's above us.

Oh, I ended him.

Made me and my older brother we would be a every night when we were little.

And I'm talking about 78 years old.

Sit upstairs in our room and we have this little event in the hallway that goes downstairs and we take it out and we'd sit there and watch him chase around the house, just making sure that you know he didn't kill her or anything.

Get up in the middle of the night and they would be tense, and they would have to keep their eye on everything.

And what?

What they put us or, you know, I remember getting up at midnight and listening, screaming and running through them, you know?

Not really running, you know, but walking really fast, get away from me and leave me alone.

I want to go to bed and laying there and just being ready If you heard.

Yeah.

If you crash just to get up and go, it's that protective.

You know?

I watch your back, you watch mine.

That that's a lot of stress on you when you're only so I mean, you gotta worry about yourself and you gotta worry about your brothers and sisters and Malone your mom.

You know, your mom's supposed to take care of you for that again.

You're trying to take care of her and doesn't work.

How about the rest of you?

D'oh!

Let it be known that, uh, you are the daughter of the son of being a better I do.

You do?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not I'm not at all ashamed to say that I am.

I think it's, You know, I think it's wonderful to say that you have my dad's have you know that.

So you volunteered that information about you?

No.

You can keep that little quieter uber most the time I stepped out of his drunk when I saw him.

So really, it is either passed out, er, except with his friends.

Yeah, my dad, Uh uh.

As faras triggering like flashbacks and old feelings like that.

Storms never bothered me like storms.

But if a car went down the street and backfired, you better be 10 feet away from him on.

Uh ah.

Let's see.

Backfires.

Dogs barking.

He hates that dogs howling.

He hates that, um, choppers, choppers going over.

And I have noticed the his starter reactions have made me have started reactions.

I hear.

I remember one time and one of my friends were walking home through this alley and it was around the fourth of July where these firecrackers go off, and I Seriously, I was like, 10 years old.

I said, Carly, get down, pushed her down on the ground.

And I was just going to go down.

She said, It's firecrackers.

I'm going What I'm doing you know, And that was awful from seeing Dad just jump have started ragging I couldn't and I you know, I wish I didn't have because here comes back for everything.

Same thing happened.

You're dead.

We have three dogs at home, and when they bark outside, he cannot stand it.

Hey, just he'll sit on that couch and we'll be watching TV.

I'll be talking on the phone as usual, and and, um, I always said there, my dad will, uh, start screaming at somebody.

You know, He'll he'll.

He doesn't even have to be in a bad mood.

He'll be in a good mood, little happy and jolly and everything.

And as soon as he hears the dog bark, he turns his head.

You know, start screaming at somebody to let the dogs and because they're barking and usually when he's not home, my mom will let him go out there in the bark it any little thing, and it doesn't bother my mom, but it bothers my dad a lot.

And another thing is cars backfiring.

You know it will be driving.

He'll swerve the car because of it, and he's just really jumpy.

And he doesn't like cars that they don't even have to be very far behind him.

And he'll pull over off the road and let the cars go because he feels really insecure.

It's like now I have noticed people I have gone into People said, Yeah, my, uh, you know, we'll get a conversation about like I'll say, I volunteer the vet center and then they'll say, Oh, really?

Uh, tell me about it.

I'll tell him when I worked there on my dad's of you know, then he is.

Oh, isn't that wonderful?

It's like you become you become an icon to these people is wow.

Yeah, three weeks ago, I went and I apply for a credit card.

Yeah.

Wait, go.

I've got a telephone call.

They asked me a few questions and then, like three days later, it came in the mail.

How old are you?

16 years old, like everybody else.

Ugo e.

Anybody else?

You got a credit?

E?

Have you had e O Monday?

My aunt from Arizona Call the one that was in the car accident.

It was a little baby.

She lived with us during summer.

She called and, um, her husband Joe hit her again.

She warned him that if he told her that she was going to he was gonna go to counseling that he was gonna get help for office problems and, you know, basically just lying to get her back down there.

And so she called us Monday and told us that Hey, he hit her again and she moved in yesterday.

She flew in, and she's living with us again.

So she's like, looking for a job, and she's gonna stay.

She'll probably at her house for six months, maybe.

Let's hope she means it this time.

Huh?

Um, I really wasn't sure.

Um, what I was gonna be doing when I first started out.

I mean, I initially thought I was just going to be here for, you know, a couple of times, too.

Help out with, um, that theater project you guys had planned.

And, um uh, so in my life, I haven't, you know, had it?

Yeah.

The, uh um uh, now the ideal American family.

So and I could understand me.

I have problems of my own.

This whole, uh, Vietnam thing.

They don't know how to react to it.

It's something that, uh, that they?

They didn't go to Vietnam, so they don't know how to, um, how to feel about it.

Kind of a background.

You kind of implied from time to time.

But you've had pain.

You've known pain.

Yeah, that's probably the, you know, the major thing that keeps us all together.

You've all had a pain.

That's Ah, it's a common denominator.

And what and we speak with, you know, nonverbal language.

Quite, uh, quite strongly.

Would you all agree with that many?

We may have different things that inflict pain, but the pain is pretty universal.

Yeah, okay.