As a child of the Cold War now clinging to middle age with nostalgia and white knuckles, I'm at a point where memories are unlocked by the oddest things, from the expected triggers like a song on the radio, to the unexpected, like a newspaper headline. Recent developments in the war in Ukraine hurtled me back to 10th grade.

In my freshman year of high school in Pine Bluff, my English teacher Mrs. Griggs liked an essay I'd written and suggested I enter the VFW's "Voice of Democracy" speech contest. We were both excited to learn my speech came in second place for Jefferson County.

The guy from the VFW told Mrs. Griggs there were a couple words in my speech that some of the judges were a little uneasy with. I knew exactly what he was referring to, as I had invoked a term coined by the Soviet government in Moscow: "useful idiot." It referred to people in the Western democracies who are easily manipulated into unwittingly advancing communist aims, undermining the strength, stability and security of NATO and the free world.

It was a different time. I suppose "useful idiot" was a little edgy for a high school speech-writing competition in the days before politics became professional wrestling, but neither the man from the VFW, Mrs. Griggs, nor I could have imagined that provocative........

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