I Pledge Allegiance

I attended my first PTA meeting last night. (Okay, not my first, because Todd and i have attended a few for other schools we considered sending our kids to, but the first for a school my child will definitely attend.) The Lakeside High school Jazz band played at the beginning. They had very fancy, meticulously-styled bedhead hair. They all looked about 12 to me. After that, the student council president (a 5th grader, I guess?) led us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone stood and put the hands over their heart and it was at once strange, and yet a little comforting. It reminded me of being a kid, and having a sense that the place I lived was the best in the world, an assurance that nothing was wrong with the place i was from. Except at 36 and kind of conflicted about the state of my country, I just felt self-conscious, and a little dirty, and a lot proud at the same time.

But then, while i tuned out the droning Peanuts voice of the PTA president (who really likes to hear herself go on and on), I said the words of the Pledge over again in my head, and i thought, "okay, that isn't so bad." I pretty much agree with all of that. But I still see where people who didn't believe in a Christian God would have a problem with it, or worry that they were having a particular God, or any God, forced on them at all.

Sigh. Things were a lot easier last time I was at a PTA meeting.