bradshreffIt’s the Friday Night Lights time of year, and among many of the “other duties as assigned” for me is being at the games to monitor students. I have the distinct honor of standing on the track and spending 3+ hours staring up at the student section of our stadium to make sure they’re not being too stupid.
Our student section can get excited, and they like props. Flags with school colors, body paint, baby powder clouds, tossing water and Gatorade bottles up and down the crowd…all fairly normal. Last night, though, something else made its way into the display of spirit, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
We all know that students can be trolls from time-to-time. In fact, they’re experts at it. So, when I saw a student in the front of the section waving around a Trump “Make America Great Again” flag, I started to make my way closer to confiscate it.
I had taken two steps in that direction before I really stopped to think. Surely, I believed, this student was waving the flag in hopes of getting a reaction from his peers, and I was certain he would get his intended effect.
But, how could I, a representative of my school, take away a flag supporting the president of the United States of America? Why was such a thought even the first thing in my head?
I talked to a couple other staff members at the game, and they too agreed that the flag probably should be taken away, but we equally all agreed that we shouldn’t take the flag away.
I don’t have a nice little wrap-up for this piece, or some profound thought to leave you with. You, like myself, will hopefully walk away from this feeling uneasy about the state of our country. Knowing that we live in a place where an action by a teenager could be either an attempt at causing chaos or a statement of patriotism. Or worse, that those two things are quickly becoming the same thing.