The 6th-grade flag team at Brookside Elementary followed a daily, reverent ritual. Every morning, they’d head to the school flagpole to unfurl and raise our flag. Then, just before the afternoon bell, they met again to pull down the ropes to lower it back down and fold it into a tight triangle.
As I moved toward 6th grade, I had my mindset on volunteering for that elite team.
The flag team procedures weren’t one bit random. The Stars and Stripes couldn’t touch the ground or be left up overnight. If tarnished, we sent it to the Boy Scouts for burning. We chanted our allegiance to it hand over heart first thing every day. It was all so wonderfully mysterious. Glorious to a ten-year-old.
But when my time finally came to lift my hand in response to my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Hill’s, call for flag team volunteers, I froze. My heart was all in, but sudden doubt that I had what it took, kept my arm down. After all, surely team members had to be highly qualified in dutiful silence and masterful folding, didn’t they? “Talks too much,” was an ever-present report card comment and I could barely fold my own t-shirts.
In the end, I missed it.
But I was still with them in spirit that year, every morning and afternoon. I knew the flag was a big deal. And the daily ceremonial protocol of that team was a building block of my allegiance.
I don’t know that elementary schools still have flag teams, but I am grateful to Brookside Elementary for letting students be the ones who raised Old Glory over our school.