My patriotic KIDS

I'm always proud of ALL of my kids - even little miss 'Airhead' who I am often also ashamed of, and even 'Bonehead', who generally pisses me off, and of course Knucklehead.

But today I am especially proud of both of my boys.

Knucklehead is a 5th grader at the school where I work as a crossing guard. Well, technically I am now on maternity leave, as of a few hours ago. So this afternoon at the end of my shift, I had to meet up with the girl who is subbing for me for the next few weeks. We waited in the nearly deserted school parking lot for a few minutes, and suddenly my sweet Knucklehead looked past me and stood up straighter and placed his hand over his heart. I turned to look behind me and saw the reason for this - the school maintenance man was taking down the flag for the day.

I joined Knucklehead in solemn silence, overwhelmed with pride that my son would so automatically show his love for Old Glory, but I was also privately dismayed by the LACK of respect that the maintenance man showed for the flag. He tossed it over his shoulders while he secured the rope into place and locked the metal door that protects the flag pole from vandals, and then casually folded the flag (THE WRONG WAY) as though he was folding a towel. He did, however, notice my son and I standing with our hands over our hearts, and seemed to at least realize for a second that he was doing something important.

Later, Bonehead (the teenager who is also the source of MOST of my headaches during this deployment) overheard me talking about this experience, as I wondered aloud whether it would be appropriate/well-received if I approached someone at the school about adding some sort of 'ceremony' to this daily routine. Bonehead, who is a fanatic about his high school JROTC program, offered to come to the elementary school at least one afternoon a week with one of his JROTC classmates, on their 'uniform day', and officially perform the TAPS ceremony that they usually do at the high school.

Of course the school might say 'no thanks', but I am going in first thing Monday morning to talk to someone about it.

And tonight I am SO STINKING PROUD of my patriotic kids!