I’m at a City Council meeting. Not the most exciting setting, but one I find myself in with occasional regularity. It’s time for the Pledge of Allegiance. I rise along with the others in the chambers. After some awkward searching, all of us looking to and fro and nervously chuckling, we locate the flag, which has been insidiously moved (Who?! Who would do that?!) to the opposite side of chambers. Hands over hearts, this group of elected officials, bureaucrats and earnest citizens begin reciting the pledge. My voice sounds strange to me – automatic and unnatural.
I pledge allegiance, to the flag,
Of the United States of America.
And to the republic,
For which it stands,
One nation, under God . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Uh-oh. I’ve completely forgotten what comes next. I can’t believe it. How could that happen? I scramble to catch up and, mumbling, join the ranks for the final line . . .
With liberty and justice for all.
I look to my right, to my left, in front of me . . . have any of my neighbors noticed my sudden silence? It seems to have gone undetected . . . whew. I’m relieved, but perplexed. How could I forget the pledge? The Pledge. The one I recited practically every day of my young life in classrooms. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now and I’ve come up with three reasons (well, maybe four) to which my shocking memory gaffe can be attributed:
1. The first and most obvious reason is that I just don’t say the pledge all that much anymore. The last time I recited it with any frequency was probably high school. Maybe a little in college, but I’m not sure about that. Now, it’s just the occasional city council meetings.
2. Perhaps it was just a simple space-out? You know the sort. When you have something great to add to a conversation and then, right as you’re about to say it, it’s gone. Poof. Similar to when you pull out your padlock at the gym, the one you’ve used almost every single day for at least five years, and for some inexplicable reason, are at a complete loss for the combination.
3. Or maybe (and this is the reason I’m a little embarrassed to admit) it was because I was fantasizing about these fabulous Louboutin boots.
(Not in a creepy sexual fetish way, just a slightly obsessive shoe fetish way.) Yes, I was drifting off into a lovely fantasy world while I was carrying out professional duties at a city council meeting. I was not raptly attending to various civic announcements and discussions of zoning. Sorry. But look at those boots! They are fantastic, are they not? Surely I am immediately understood and forgiven. The perfect platform – high, but not in a cartoonish extreme. The four inch (at least) stiletto heel. The super sexy peep toe. The ever-so-slightly deviant-looking lacing, affixed to stud-like fasteners. And that mesmerizing red sole. Sigh. Back to my final reason for forgetting the pledge . . .
4. The “under God” part. That’s where I lost the thread. It’s jarring to me and always has been. I’m a heathen, it’s true. I was raised with a vague, diluted sort of Christianity. I mean, we celebrated the big Christian holidays, but even though I knew the religious meaning behind them, Christmas and Easter were much more about Santa and the Easter Bunny in my house.
So, what about this “under God” part of our pledge? I’ve noticed a lot of people lately, on the ubiquitous Facebook, in conversations and in public dialogue, really emphasizing it. They go for it with great gusto: “UNDER GOD!!!” they say and write. Why such emphasis? Aren’t the other parts just as meaningful? If I had to vote, I’d pick “with liberty and justice for all” as my favorite, but I don’t shout it out or write it in caps. Don’t these “under God” emphasizers know the history of the pledge? That “under God” was a Johnny Come Lately add on, the pledge having been amended to include it in 1954, more than 60 years after it was written in 1892. Guess what else I learned about the pledge, in my quick little internet search . . . The man who wrote the pledge, Francis Bellamy, was a Baptist minister (and yet did not include “under God” in the original version) and a Socialist (gasp!). This strikes me as the kind of information that would upset the conservative, Christian and often Tea Party “patriot” types who like to emphasize UNDER GOD so zealously. And not like anybody wants to be or can be judged by who they’re related to, but Francis Bellamy had a cousin named Edward Bellamy who was a Socialist Utopian novelist. It seems as though they may have been a whole family of bad seeds.
It isn’t just the “God” part that I, with my heathen history, don’t fully comprehend. “Under” is even more disconcerting. In general, I don’t like to be “under” anything, which brings me back to the boots. Oh, the boots, in all their bad-ass glory. The wearer of these boots would be transformed – instantly more powerful, assertive, mysterious, sophisticated, tough and, as a result, unbelievably sexy.
I imagine myself wearing them at a city council meeting with my favorite Theory wide leg pants and perhaps a Diane von Furstenberg blouse. That fantastic flash of cherry red sole barely visible, yet stunning, as I walk to the podium to attend to my business for the evening. What? Perhaps a bit too much for a suburban city council meeting, you say? No matter, I have many other fantasy scenarios for which the boots are quite well suited. Sometimes I imagine wearing them, with little else, as I roll around on the hood of an exotic, luxury car à la Tawny Kitaen in White Snake’s “Here I Go Again” video. Ah, the anthems of my youth. I also wear them, in my mind’s eye of course, seeing as I don’t actually own them, as I sit front row at NYC fashion week shows. Sometimes I’m wearing them with artfully ripped jeans and a 3.1 Phillip Lim sheer overlay sweater as I lunch and shop in Paris. All lovely fantasies, but my favorite is when those sexy peep toes and sky high stilettos are peeking out from underneath a power suit as I stride into the Senate Chamber, the Senator from Washington introducing her bill to amend the United States Pledge of Allegiance . . . “With liberty, justice and Louboutins for all.”
