At Michael’s fifth grade band concert Tuesday night, Rachel and I sit high up in the beachers. Below us, in white shirts and dark pants, sitting in row after row of folding chairs, the kids honk on their instruments as they warm up. The orchestra leader asks us all to stand and face the flag draped on the far wall beside the basketball scoreboard. The honking stops. Chair legs scrape and bleachers creak as everyone stands. “Shh!” a woman near me says. The entire gymnasium falls silent, and the first notes of the national anthem sound.
My arms are folded across my chest. It’s been decades since I’ve placed my hand on my heart for the anthem, since I was a cub scout. I glance at the people around me. People stand with hands in their pockets, hanging at their sides, or with their arms folded. None of them have their hand on their chest.
But wait. Down on the gym floor, a gangly African-American girl in the fifth row, clarinet in one hand, has laid the other across her white blouse. A few rows back a pudgy flour-white boy faces the flag with this hand on his chest. I turn and look behind me. There are a few more. A row back and across the aisle, a square-jawed man with short dark hair and iron gray temples. Up in the last row of the bleachers, a stocky young man holds his baseball hat across his grey t-shirt.
I probably stopped in junior high, because of the sheer geekiness of such a public declaration that I loved democracy, free speech, and freedom of religion. As the last strains die away in the gym, I decide that next time, my hand will be on my shirt.
It occurs to me that this might embarass Rachel. I turn to her as the crowd applauds the band.
“You know,” I say, leaning close to be heard above the din, “when I was a kid, ninety percent of the people here would have had their hands over their hearts during the anthem.”
Rachel nods.
“I was looking around,” I said. “Hardly anybody does now.”
Rachel nods again and smiles. “It’s just. . .” she shrugs. “. . .automatic.”
I don’t understand what she means at first. I look at her quizically.
“What?”
“You know,” she says, and her hand rises from her side.
“You? . . . did you?” My eyebrows lift.
“Uh-huh,” Rachel says.
I hadn’t noticed my own wife, standing next to me with her right hand against her pink v-neck sweater. We’ve been married over a year, and never stood together for the anthem before. From now on, I’m with her. And the pudgy kid and the skinny girl.
Fools Rush In 