I guess I should get used to this by now, but for some reason I just couldn't believe my eyes when reading tonight online about Guantanamo Bay.

"Miller, who had said months ago that three juveniles being held would be transferred soon, said their release was being held up at higher levels.

The military says there are three boys between the ages of 13 and 15 held in separate quarters. But Miller also said Wednesday there are other juveniles, ages 16 and 17, mixed in with the adult prison population."

Excuse me, did I read between the ages of 13 and 15? Is is possible that the kid might even have had a birthday since being held? That he might have been as young as 12? And he, like all the others was shipped over on a cargo plane with a corn sack over his head and block-out-sound headphones, each arm chained to the sides of the plane?

When I was twelve I started my period. When I was 12 I switched from the trumpet to the Tuba. When I was twelve, I won the geography bee. When I was twelve my mother had breast cancer. When I was twelve, I road my 4-wheeler around listening to Dear Jessie by Madonna...not because the album was new, but because I loved the song. "Pink elephants and lemonade...dear Jessie see the roses raining on our love parade." Or something along those lines.

And perhaps this 12 now 13 year old will come away from Cuba with a scholorship for underprivledged, misled youth, go to a nice State university somewhere in our sprawling land and grow up to be the poster-child for everything our country stands for...or maybe not.

Having just had the clock turn over into Thanksgiving, and called my family to thank them for being them, well sometimes I think it's better to use Thanksgiving to think on what we have as people, not what we have as a country. When I was twelve I probably still drew pilgrims with belt-buckle shoes and helped serve the annual thanksgiving dinner to the elderly shipped in from the town old-folks home.

On tomorrow/today's thanksgiving, in a roomful of half-strangers, half-friends, I'll be thankful that I'm here where I am today, and that I've had the most privledged life a 12 year old could ever hope to have. Last week I wrote the Missouri Senators and Representatives...and I suppose it's time to write them again.