Friday, March 29th, 2024
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Nicholas Incelli

“I was a brand-new soldier, 18 years old and fresh out of high school in late 2014. I was stationed in Germany and at the time our unit was conducting a convoy from Baumholder, Germany to Warsaw, Poland. I received this duck as a gift but more as a joke. The duck stands about an inch and a half tall, has a cigarette in his mouth, with a beer in his left hand and a sign inscribed “haste mal nen euro” which is German for “I have no money.”  I can still remember to this day having it lobbed into the window of the big truck I was driving at the time and hearing my squad leader call out “good luck kid, don’t mess up.”  Little did I know all of the experience’s we would go through. The duck has been all the way from Millersville’s Campus to MSAB Jordan and 22 countries in between. He’s been buried in the sand of Kuwait, played with by stray Romanian dogs, and showed to my nephews just to bring them a smile. I can say without a shred of doubt this duck has gotten me out of speeding tickets, kept me awake during long hours on the road, helped me transition out of the military to college, gotten me home safe to my family and has literally gone everywhere that I have. There’s a lot of meaning behind an object that has been with someone for years through countless encounters, tons of experiences and almost a quarter of my life’s worth of memories. This miniscule child’s toy has become a beacon of luck and good fortune in my life for years now.”

 

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