The Presidential Physical Fitness Awards I received in fifth and sixth grade were signed by Richard Nixon, or at least it was a picture of his signature.  I knew he was reviled by many in those days, but I still coveted that parchment in its red construction paper sheath and preserved as best I could the striking cloth patches (Presidential eagle on field of blue) which I never had my mother sew to the shoulders of my favorite windbreakers or sweatshirts.  I’m sure they’re in state somewhere in the bowels of my filing cabinet.  These were the early 70s, and though we sacrificed two weeks of gym class to stop watches and tape measurers, there was nothing in those timed sprints or the distances we leapt across pits of sand to suggest that somewhere hundreds of thousands of people were being vaporized or shot by tens of thousands of our soldiers before they themselves were killed.  Recently, I had Christmas dinner with a doctor who’d grown up in Vilnius in the 80’s, and every race he grunted or chin-up toward which he wrenched himself had as its goal the defeat of the army they were certain would invade.  When I threw the softball down the field and the yards were counted and shouted back, we were not calculating if I could have reached with my best toss a bunker crammed full of Vietcong.  My new friend, the aspiring pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, heaved tennis balls filled with sand—to approximate the weight of grenades—at plywood dummies of American tanks. Everyone, he explained over Shiraz and standing ribs, would know the exact height of the sweet spot, soft underbelly, chink in the armor; as children, they had been taught to recognize the place where their efforts might do the most damage.