On the day I deployed, my brother asked “Aren’t you scared?”I started to answer, to tell him courage was being scared and doing it anyway, but he’d already pointed at the salad bar on my uniform.I started explaining the awards before he got distracted again.A decade and two wars passed before I saw him at Thanksgiving. Political rants were his new hobby.”Our military just ended up getting half the world seeing us as the bad guys.”My mother shushes him, asks: “Were you scared?””Still am,” I say, acknowledging my brother’s point. “I did it anyway.”Based around Laurence Simon’s weekly challenge for the 100 word-stories podcast. The player above should have the audio for this week; if it doesn’t, you can find the audio here to download.I am updating these in a podcast feed (dubbed “Radio Free Steven the Nuclear Man” by Laurence). You can subscribe with this link (https://feeds.feedburner.com/Ideatrash) in your podcatcher or phone. You can also read and hear the rest of the entries at the 100 Word Stories podcast site.