Flowers: Any talk of U.S. taking Greenland leaves me cold

Right after graduating from high school, my father enlisted in the Army. He had no idea they would be sending him to the other end of the world, a place where there were six months of darkness and six months of midnight sun.

Teddy Flowers — an 18-year-old Philly boy with an obsession for scrapple and the dulcet sounds of rhythm and blues, this kid who played the harmonica on his front step and smoked Marlboros while still in his altar boy cassock — found himself communing with Eskimos.

At least, that’s what he wrote to my mother, his sweetheart of a year, the woman he would eventually marry. I’m not sure that the inhabitants of Greenland were actually Eskimos, but I do know that they were as foreign to him as this street kid from 49th street was to them.

This was back in 1957, a few years after Greenland became part of Denmark. I remember as a child thinking that it was kind of strange that this giant piece of ice and snow was owned by that tiny little peninsula north of Germany.

I also remember thinking, as most of us have, that Greenland is a slab of ice, while Iceland has thermal baths. Geography has a strange sense of humor.

I haven’t much thought about Greenland in the last 40 or so years of my life. But our incoming president has somehow decided to make this remote and gargantuan chunk of ice the topic du jour.

In a recent press conference, he floated the idea of buying Greenland, even though to my knowledge it’s not up for sale. He also intimated that if the Danes wouldn’t fork it over, we might take it by force.

I thought I was watching stand up comedy when I saw that. Ha ha, force a country to give up land, ha ha, and if they don’t want to, ha ha, let’s just consider going all Sudetenland on them.

Many of my friends viewed it differently. They tried to explain to me that Trump was playing “3D” chess, meaning that he was so much smarter than we were and so just let him do his thing.

It’s what Salena Zito has called the “People who hate Trump take him literally but not seriously, and those who love him take him seriously but not literally.”

Since I neither love nor hate him, I guess that means I have to figure out my own way through this mess. And mess it is.

You don’t suggest that a sovereign nation, like Canada, for example, can be annexed to the United States. Foreign policy involves treating your allies with at least as much respect, and hopefully much more, than your enemies.

I understand Denmark isn’t exactly one of our go-to countries when we think of national security, but it’s a member of the European Union, and deserves not to be the victim of some diplomatic “Flip Your Real Estate” show.

There are also more important things to worry about, like cabinet nominees, the economy and the immigration crisis. After all, those were the things that Trump campaigned upon, not the fate of a giant ice cube.

But still, there are people who will insist that debating the fate of Greenland is a legitimate national security topic, even though we still have bases there and are in no danger of being evicted.

If my father were still alive, I’m certain he’d be as puzzled as I am about this whole dust-up.

This is the imaginary conversation I can hear him having with my mother as he was sitting in his frigid barracks back in 1957:

Teddy: It’s really cold, Lou.

Lucy: I’m sorry honey. You’ll be home soon.

Teddy: Not soon enough. It’s an icebox.

Lucy: I know! And they call it Greenland!

Teddy: The Danes have a weird sense of humor.

Lucy: The Danes?

Teddy: Yeah, Denmark owns it.

Lucy: Well they can have it!

Teddy: You know it sweetheart. Only a fool would want to own a giant Icebox … plus they speak this crazy language.

Lucy: Well honey maybe one day some visionary will ignore the principal of national borders and just annex it for the U.S. and they’ll learn to speak English!

Teddy: Maybe one day Philadelphians will too.

My dad had a sense of humor. I suppose I’ll have to have one too, from now on.

cflowers1961@gmail.com