Right, privilege and respect

Since we last spoke I attended a professional baseball game. Big surprise for me, right?  We were all standing with our hats off, hands over heart just moments from the National Anthem beginning the colors were in fact being presented at the time.  A teen age boy came walking down the aisle with his nachos and swag filling up both hands. I leaned over the rail and knocked his hat off of his head.  He looked around realized the situation and stood quietly as the anthem was played.  When it was over, only then did he pick up his hat and walk away.  One man in my row remarked, “I would have beat your (bleep) if you did that do me.”
My reply was: “If what I did was wrong, how come you were standing up with your hat removed?”
After the game my friend Rob asked me why I did not escalate the situation.
“I would have taken care of his friend for you!”  The point is, as I told Rob, was to simply show respect for the flag and our country.  Baseball is one of the pleasures we enjoy here in America.  It is not a right; it is a privilege to be able to go to the ball park on a Sunday afternoon while other Americans are literally fighting and dying. I have been there myself, and if necessary will fight for their rights even in the ball park.  However, I would rather befuddle my opponents than make my fists sore. The young man in question certainly learned a valuable lesson.  The fact that he left he hat on the ground until the end of the song shows me he knew he was in the wrong.  He simply thought he could make it to his seat before the music started and he got caught in the middle instead. As for the guy who wanted to challenge me to a fight, he can grow up or move to Canada with Alec Baldwin
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After the game I drove to Fort McHenry in Baltimore City Harbor the site of course where our national anthem was conceived and born of the night time British bombardment and subsequent retreat from the American Defenses. 
I am absolutely moved to tears every time I visit and have been several times since I was first stationed in the area in 2000.
On this particular day there was a strong breeze causing the flag to flutter and snap in the air.  As I stood there gazing at our nation’s flag with reverence I could not help but think what the defenders inside the fort and the Americans living in Baltimore must have felt that next morning seeing not the perfect flag that I was looking at but the one that was tattered and shot through but still waving after the nightlong bombardment.
 I would encourage you to think of those men and our current heroes every time you look at our flag in your own yard