the unflagging flagness of flag day

Flag Day. June 14. As a schoolkid, flags galore, a parade around the school. Then, in the Sixties, the flag was appropriated by the "America, love it or leave it" crowd, meaning the crowd that brooked no dissent, that wanted blind allegiance during an unpopular war, the crowd that seemed to say, "The flag means this and only this or else you are un-American and disloyal" and cue the music and the bromides and the jingoism. There were backlashes to all that, ranging from flag burning (which I opposed and still oppose and don't get, but still believe in freedom of speech even if I radically disagree with such speech or expressions of speech) to clothing of flag designs, on undies or kerchiefs or dresses or ties. One person's honoring the flag was seen as blasphemous by another, and vice versa. Then right after 9/11, we put a flag up on our house. Proudly, defiantly, gladly, collectively, sadly, yes, patriotically. Our hillside street on Tipperary Hill, in Syracuse, looked picture perfect with flags rippling at dawn or dusk. But should we have castigated a neighbor if they chose not to fly a flag? No, and we did not. But I myself felt it really was a time, like my childhood, when the flag was a true unifier, when it represented a huddling of a family under a protective shelter, a collective cloak of armor and quiet pride. That's just me. For some, it was a rallying symbol of jingoistic and simplistic revenge, or would-be revenge. I guess. I can't read minds. Today? I don't know. I think the right still likes to appropriate the flag for exclusionary and militant purposes. When I saw American flags waving in Berlin while Obama spoke or in Chicago when he won, I thought that maybe we were over with parochial possession of the flag's meaning. Don't get me wrong: it would be no counter-victory for broad-minded patriotism if the left seized the flag for its own agenda to the exclusion of others (not sure, really, how that would work). The flag is broad, its stripes sweep outward. Its stars are in a wide firmament, its colors are of multiple hues. May it stand for the values no one owns alone but that everyone embraces in a civil and free society (don't forget the civil in civilization).

Cancel Cancel Cancel Mayday!

Lame Disclaimer: Anything I type may be compromised owing to the influence and confluence and after-effects of traveling from Berlin to Frankfurt to Chicago to Syracuse, then staying up, too jazzed to sleep, resulting in 23 or so hours of uninterrupted wakefulness, give or take the odd feline quasi-nap on a jet, here or there.

The trip almost never happened. Why say that now? Because it has now happened, that's why. Two days before embarking, Spousal Unit was sitting by the computer and simultaneously shouting words into the phone, obviously talking to one of those voice-recognition-robot-fucko-dorko computers. This computer happened to be Brainiac Machine No. 5569032254 of United Airlines. SU was trying to arrange meals to accommodate a child (our child) and her own special dietary needs.

I had objected to her earlier attempt at this because: a) I was nervous it would somehow screw the whole itinerary up [move the word "up" up in the sentence]; b) I felt we truly did not need this special meal stuff, certainly not the McDonaldsization of our aloft dining experience.

Her shouting into the phone, repeatedly, triggered all my lower-nature hair-trigger impulses.

I walked by, wiseguy, and muttered, "Cancel trip."

"They heard it!" Spousal Unit shouted.

She hung up.

"You've got to talk to a real human."

"No kidding."

(I'm leaving out some of the more colorful adjectives and participles English employs for such lively dialogue.)

"What did they say?"

"It said, 'cancel trip,' and I hung up."

Good.

My hands were shaking with fear by now.

First lose a job and now this? Yikes, what is it? Do I have advanced Tourette's Syndrome? Or merely onset Kokonuts Kamikaze Malaise?

She reached a human.

Trip saved.

But I knew I couldn't relax until completing every leg of the trip. I had visions of an airline factotum looking up from his or her computer screen in Brussels or Nairobi or wherever, saying, in very broken English, "Monsieur le Kokonuts? We have, how do you say, no record of ze itinerary for ze Mr. Pawlie Kokonuts or anyone by zat name."

Oh, it's a long, strange trip, I'm on, all right.

Perhap, just perhaps, it's a sign of mental health that "cancel trip" became a humorous mantra while actually on the trip. Hey, we kid, we laugh! We're freakin' Laughorists!

(Once I felt at least sort of kind of certain that things were ironed out, after SU talked with the United Airlines Human Being de Customer Service, I texted her (Spousal Unit), declaring, "I'm an asshole." Hey, it's progress! But . . . [always the dangerous"but"] don't you think United Airlines' computer thingy should have better defaults? Hunh?)

Out of Time, Out of Steps

"Does anybody really know what time it is?" is the refrain, I believe, of an old song by the group Chicago. Maybe it should be the temporary national anthem of the United States. I mean, really. This Daylight Saving Time thing is putting us through a national jet lag, and for what? Allegedly to save energy. Right. I'm with the critics who say it smacks of both paternalism and Puritanism. And where do they put all this saved daylight anyway, into the Federal Light Reserve Bank? Can people with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) draw from it during dark times? Is it all because someone wanted to give up time for Lent?

As I speak, so to speak, my kid is awake, goggle-eyed (whereas, I'm more Google-eyed), not tired enough to go to sleep because her body is telling her it is one hour earlier in yesterday's time. And I, night owl, am not nearly tired enough either.

But, oh, we'll be paying for it tomorrow. Oh yeah.

And that's just what the Puritans want, the "dawnists" who feel more virtuous than us the benighted, by virtue of their being early risers. (Disclaimer: I do not detect such condescension at all in the Secretary of Dawns.)

And it just dawned on me that the association of nonmorning people with night, darkness, subterfuge, shadows, and let's come out and just say it, evil, is some vast conspiracy, some huge public relations campaign against us owls, the burners of the midnight oil.

We are unproductive laggards, slackers, to the rolled-up-sleeves, go-get-'em elan of the Babbitt-Midwest-virtuous Aurora addicts.

My bet is most bloggers are night's-talkers, not ante meridiem mavens.

Ah, the good ol' twelve-hour clock.

What is it about twelve anyway? Twelve hours before noon, twelve hours after noon, twelve months, twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve imams, twelve days of Christmas, and, um, Twelve Steps, needed for "nocturnaholics."

They only meet if they can't sleep.

At night.

In bed. After all, nocturnaholics are viewed as naughty, if viewed at all, in the dark.


The coinages dawnist(s) and nocturnaholic(s) are copyright 2007 by The Laughorist, a.k.a. Pawlie Kokonuts. These neologisms are to be emulated by all his serial-comma-loving minions.