2001-09-20 - 11:09 p.m.

Wave the Flag

As everybody knows, the USA is going though a surge of patriotic fever. The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have led to millions of people putting the flag everywhere: on their houses, on their cars...

Yesterday I was doing my usual drive to pick up the comics, and on the drive home I decided to count all the flags I saw. The trip back from the UPS hub is usually about 20 minutes, and on that trip I saw 147 flags. That is a hell of a lot of flags. This includes little flags attached to the roofs of cars, flags attached to the aerials of cars, flags printed out by computer and taped to car windows, flags painted on car windows, flags hanging from houses, flags stuck on mailboxes or taped up inside houses but visible from the street.

Of course I may have missed a few since I was mainly trying not to get killed by morning rush hour traffic.

I should also point out that my count did NOT include: bunting of any kind, red-white-and-blue flags that were not real American flags, and it doesn't count the innumerable "God Bless America" signs that were put up in front of small businesses all along the route.

Wow, talk about patriotism! I suppose it is good to have all these flags around so forgetful people like me can be reminded of what country they are in. This should keep me from wandering into Canada or Mexico by mistake.

Seriously, I've heard that some people are alarmed by all of this patriotic fervor and showing of the colors - they seem to think it's the prelude to some sort of shocking violence on our part.

I don't really think so. In fact, looking at all these flags makes me kind of sad. People are frightened, and people are hurting. They are trying to keep the darkness (inside and out) at bay with a powerful symbol: the starts and stripes.

I was talking about this with Lily, and she agreed with me, but she also said that all the flag waving made her proud, too. It showed that the people of America were being kind and sympathetic to the innocent people killed in the terrorist attacks, and they were sticking together in the face of adversity. I'm not the first person to notice that people everywhere seem to be nicer and more polite since the terrible events of Sept. 11. It's like everyone has been reminded that there are much, much worse things than just having a normal workday.

So, I think it's kind of sweet.

Well, mostly. While I was walking in front of my house later in the day a green SUV passed me on the street. Painted on its back window was: "Nuke Bin Laden."

Okay, so not everyone is feeling sympathetic.