Flying Our (Non-Freak) Flag

I'm excited that's it's the Fourth of July. We get to have a picnic and I get to watch delighted little girls see the fireworks tonight. But the best part is that I got to see this flying outside my house:


Now, don't get me wrong, I love being an American and I have always loved our flag because it is an emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave. But my patriotism actually has little to do with my joy at seeing the old Stars and Stripes flapping outside my door. I am actually just relieved that we are no longer the only people on the block who DON'T have a flag and that there is a possibility (be it ever so slight) that our status as ward pariahs might have been changed.

There's a (long) story behind this sense of relief. Right after we moved in, Carter noticed our across-the-street neighbor putting up a flag on our property. He ran out to see what she was doing. She explained that every year in this ward, the Young Women sell flags to raise money for Girls Camp. Carter thought he was being funny and said, "Well, you're putting it up! It looks like you're not really giving me a choice!" Ah, my darling, abrasive husband and his difficult-to-get-every-time- (even-after-eight-years-of-marriage) so-that-lady-didn't-stand-a-chance sarcasm. He walked off and the mortified woman immediately started taking the flag down. Carter felt bad. He didn't mean to hurt her feelings, he just didn't want to buy a flag because he was worried about taking it down at the right time and folding it properly and stuff (we are very patriotic, after all, and wouldn't stand for flag abuse in any form.) (Oh, and in his defense, we'd just purchased a new home with plenty of projects to sap our time and energy. And we were expecting our third child. So he was just trying to conserve our resources and spare us the flag maintenance!). Well, he felt even worse when we both realized the Young Women were offering the SERVICE of putting up the flag for each national holiday, not the flag itself. This became apparent when the entire neighborhood became uniformly decorated with large, beautiful flags on that first national holiday after the "free sample" Carter thwarted. We were literally the ONLY people on the block who did not purchase this service (and this included neighbors of other faiths who had even LESS of a reason to support the Young Women than we do!). We basically looked like terrorists every holiday for a year (not to mention scrooges who refuse to help Mormon teenage girls in their quest to live out of doors and socially abuse each other and/or their leaders for one week each year). In fact, I'm willing to bet money (enough for one year of flag service) there's now an FBI profile on our family thanks to this faux pas.

Let's just say we enthusiastically signed up this year. And I'm so glad to see it's working. Also, I love America. You got that, Mr. FBI Agent?

Happy Fourth of July!