I was out with the wife tonight at Burger King in the next town over, taking advantage of cheap Whoppers and our mutual lack of desire to do much in the kitchen.
So, we're sitting there in a parking space, facing the outside play area, eating, and bearing up under the yammering and bitching of the dog in the back seat, who wants her double hamburger treat then and there. Mommy and Daddy have two speeds, too slow, and not fast enough, and she's vocal.
Anyway, out comes this guy to the foot of the flagpole, which is ridiculously tall, sporting a flag that looks like it should be the backdrop for the opening scene of "Patton." It's up there, whipping and snapping about, and he begins to lower it, and it's obvious that (a) it's coming down completely out of control, and (b), there's no damned way that he's going to be able to handle it all on his lonesome.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for real patriotism, but not at the cost of respect and dignity. We're up to our necks in the last decade, post-9/11, with people who either have the best intentions, or who would at least like to look like they have the best intentions, but at times, like tonight, the whole thing just turns into a grabasstic clusterfuck.
So, this guy has the flag bearing down on him, and it's evident that all he wants to do is get it down and out of the way, so, of course, it falls all over him and spreads out onto the ground at his feet. At this point, I've put my burger down, because I've just about crushed it into paste. As I start to get out of the car, this numbnuts actually throws it onto the ground and then drags it out flat like it's a POS rag and not Old Glory.
That was it. I sort of lost it. Shoulders forward, hands back in fists, I was halfway across the parking lot and asking him in no uncertain, loud, and profane terms just what in the fuck it was that he thought he was doing. So he looks at me and has the gall to inform me that he was in the military, that he knows exactly what he's doing with the flag, that he served under it, and that members of his family died defending it. As you might imagine, I'm losing it at this point.
So, I give him a chance to get inside, and then I go talk to the manager, having to go through this idiot POS to find her. Again, he repeats the crap about having been in the military, sandwiching in the admission that he did fold it up on the ground, and I cut him off cold right there: there's no fucking way that someone in the service could have been in a similar circumstance of <span style="font-style: italic">any</span> stateside activity and have done what he did without standing tall at a Captain's Mast, just no fucking way, and I told him so, albeit with a bit more restraint than I'm exercising now. The manager looked at him like he had three heads, and I left before I got into a donnybrook that I just didn't need.
Tomorrow I'm calling the regional management offices to see just who this restaurant belongs to, and to have a frank discussion about what one does and doesn't do with a flag. I'm used to seeing it on heads, on asses, on the backs of jackets, on cups, and frisbees, and anything and everything else that you can think of, but I've never seen it so callously mistreated by someone who would then have the nerve to claim prior military service. Really, it was all I could do not to kick his limp dick up around his fucking shoulders.
Okay, I feel better now ...
So, we're sitting there in a parking space, facing the outside play area, eating, and bearing up under the yammering and bitching of the dog in the back seat, who wants her double hamburger treat then and there. Mommy and Daddy have two speeds, too slow, and not fast enough, and she's vocal.
Anyway, out comes this guy to the foot of the flagpole, which is ridiculously tall, sporting a flag that looks like it should be the backdrop for the opening scene of "Patton." It's up there, whipping and snapping about, and he begins to lower it, and it's obvious that (a) it's coming down completely out of control, and (b), there's no damned way that he's going to be able to handle it all on his lonesome.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for real patriotism, but not at the cost of respect and dignity. We're up to our necks in the last decade, post-9/11, with people who either have the best intentions, or who would at least like to look like they have the best intentions, but at times, like tonight, the whole thing just turns into a grabasstic clusterfuck.
So, this guy has the flag bearing down on him, and it's evident that all he wants to do is get it down and out of the way, so, of course, it falls all over him and spreads out onto the ground at his feet. At this point, I've put my burger down, because I've just about crushed it into paste. As I start to get out of the car, this numbnuts actually throws it onto the ground and then drags it out flat like it's a POS rag and not Old Glory.
That was it. I sort of lost it. Shoulders forward, hands back in fists, I was halfway across the parking lot and asking him in no uncertain, loud, and profane terms just what in the fuck it was that he thought he was doing. So he looks at me and has the gall to inform me that he was in the military, that he knows exactly what he's doing with the flag, that he served under it, and that members of his family died defending it. As you might imagine, I'm losing it at this point.
So, I give him a chance to get inside, and then I go talk to the manager, having to go through this idiot POS to find her. Again, he repeats the crap about having been in the military, sandwiching in the admission that he did fold it up on the ground, and I cut him off cold right there: there's no fucking way that someone in the service could have been in a similar circumstance of <span style="font-style: italic">any</span> stateside activity and have done what he did without standing tall at a Captain's Mast, just no fucking way, and I told him so, albeit with a bit more restraint than I'm exercising now. The manager looked at him like he had three heads, and I left before I got into a donnybrook that I just didn't need.
Tomorrow I'm calling the regional management offices to see just who this restaurant belongs to, and to have a frank discussion about what one does and doesn't do with a flag. I'm used to seeing it on heads, on asses, on the backs of jackets, on cups, and frisbees, and anything and everything else that you can think of, but I've never seen it so callously mistreated by someone who would then have the nerve to claim prior military service. Really, it was all I could do not to kick his limp dick up around his fucking shoulders.
Okay, I feel better now ...
