My Flag

While playing sports when you grow up on the north shore of Chicago, you start to accumulate ribbons and trophies and other memorabilia of seasons that you have played on different teams. So what does this have to do with the flag being important to me? I saw a documentary on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and realized how much the U.S. needed to win that game to pick up American spirits. I have these medals hanging just inside my room and whenever I see them, I think of that great game which boosted our pride in America and started to throw us into the America of today.

I truly love these medals. To me they mean more than any trophy I have received over my years. The ribbon makes me feel as if I'm out there on the ice with the 1980 team because of the American "red, white, and blue" on it. However, like I have said in class, though I don't have any pictures of it, when I see the full American flag, there's only one thing I think about and that is the firefighters raising the flag over the wreckage of 9/11. I feel mix emotions of happiness that this flag has brought to people, but sad because I know what terrors this flag has flown over like 9/11. 

On a different note, when I have traveled to different countries, I notice that there are still more American flags per square feet on the little patch of land that is the U.S. embassy than the surrounding country has in its entirety. I'm not sure what it is with Americans and our flag, but we seem as though we just cannot get enough of it! Next thing you know, people will be sleeping with their flags. Seriously though, U.S. citizens take so much pride in the stars and stripes that it makes me feel proud of this country, that we can all agree on one thing, we have a pretty cool flag.