Are American flags a guy thing?
At the Watt and Whitney stop this morning, the No. 82 bus picked up -- literally -- a heavyset guy in a motorized wheelchair and deposited him in the coach. As he was maneuvering his chair using his tiny joystick, I noticed the American flag on a stick planted in the top of his seat back. It wasn't a big flag, certainly nothing like the guy I wrote about back here. No, the flagpole was about a foot tall and the flag a fitting size. If the flag were hair on a woman, it would be said to fall to her shoulders.
This puzzle only temporarily distracted me from my book, but a few minutes later something captured unconsciously in my peripheral vision prompted me to look up. There on the northeast corner of Alta Arden and Morse was another guy riding in a motorized wheelchair. And he had the same size American flag flying from a foot-tall wooden stick stuck in his wheelchair seat back.
Now even this coincidence would not have troubled me much if it had not been for what I saw at the 16th Street light rail station. I had taken the train past my normal 23rd Street stop so I could go to Safeway on my way to work. As I walked past the handicap boarding ramp, I saw a woman in a motorized wheelchair waiting for the next train out of town. Without staring, I studied her and her chair. As I walked around the ramp and down 16th Street, I turned and looked back.
No flag.
Perhaps guys reduced to relying on a tiny joystick to maneuver feel compelled to compensate with flag-waving bravado.
Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boysSome guy things are a puzzle even to guys.
Rally once again,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom
We will rally from the hillside
We'll gather from the plains,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom!
4 comments:
Ummmm, maybe they're in chairs because they were injured in a war. Maybe they're vets. Ya think?
The guy I saw on the street might have been from The Greatest Generation or, failing that, a veteran of The Forgotten War.
But the first big guy in a chair with a little flag waving in his electric-powered breeze? Nah.
Still, what does attaching a flag to a wheelchair have to do with being a veteran? I avoided the draft in 1971 by joining the U.S. Navy. The Navy, in turn, provided me with a tour of Asian seaports and brothels whenever I wasn't floating about at Yankee Station. I have a page in my service medical record that says I received a dose of the clap in the line of duty. I suppose I could fly a flag from my pole.
Personally, I prefer my flagwaving on Veterans Day and Memorial Day. Not on the bus on the way to Wal-Mart.
okay, now that you've made me LOL--I'm surprised that you're surprised that the guys in wheelchairs are flying flags. I dunno: what else are they gonna fly?
Personally, I think I would install one of those old-fashioned whip antennas and a CB radio. At the tip of the antenna, I would attach a pennant, perhaps FCBarcelona. Really, if you want to show pride for something, make it an internationally recognized fútbol side.
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