[Elspode]

Actually, last night I took him to his first Civil Air Patrol meeting. He has expressed an interest in joining the military after school, and since we would rather he not have to stop bullets with his body, we are steering him toward an Air Force career. The CAP can give a pretty good leg up on such a career, including scholarships, or, if college isn't in his future, then mustering out of CAP and into the USAF at a higher rank than normal volunteers or conscripts (yeah, I fear there's a draft in his future...better to plan to avoid that, I think).

CAP has a ton of cool activities, as well as physical training and testing achievement goals, aerospace education, opportunities to take flights, S&R exercises. Hell, if I were less busy, *I'd* join as a senior member.

While he won't learn combat techniques, he will learn teamwork, leadership, poise, self-assertion, confidence and lots of other stuff that the future occupants of State and Federal prisons who are now taunting him won't learn.