Pledging Allegiance

Yesterday was the Laterne Umzug in Santa Monica, which means 'Lantern Walk' - children walked around a Clover Park, carrying lanterns. I don't quite understand it, but it's a big thing in Germany, apparently. (You can see pictures on Flickr, if you want to get the gist. Not of our Laterne Umzug, but of Laterne Umzugs in general).

We bumped into Karin there, who was off to the Mar Vista Neighhborhood Council meeting, to talk about the joys of having a charter school in their neighborhood - for which she would be given two minutes. She was a little nervous, and so I said I'd go with her for moral support. She was very grateful for my altruistic gesture, which wasn't altruistic at all. I'm going to do a similar thing next month at Westchester Neighborhood Council, and had no idea what to say, or how it worked.

Anyway, I got there before her (I was on my bike, she had to go home first) in time for the Pledge of Allegiance. I'd never done the pledge of allegiance before, but I knew it was coming so I'd read about it on Wikipedia.

First, I wasn't sure if, as a foreigner, I was supposed to pledge allegiance - I mean, it wasn't strictly true. Given a war between the US and the UK, I guess I'd be on the UK's side (unless I was stuck in America, in which case I'd pledge allegiance to anything they wanted me to pledge allegiance to, rather than be stuck in Guantanamo Bay). I wondered if I should cross my fingers or something.

Second, although I knew the words (because, as I've said, I looked it up on Wikipedia) I didn't know that there was a rhythm to it, which everyone else knew. I imagined it would be a sort of drone, something like when we had to recite the Lord's Prayer at school. ('Cos of the separation of church and state, the boys don't learn things like the Lord's Prayer at school - which makes me worry about what will happen when they meet vampires). The rhythm goes kind of:

i PLEdge allEGiance to the flag [slight pause] of the UNIted states of AMERICA [pause] AND to the rePUBLIC for which it STANDS ....

So I didn't need to worry about crossing my fingers or anything, 'cos I was completely out of synch and just mumbled along.

I asked the boys about it this morning on the way to school, and they could recite it, and had the right rhythm. So, thankfully, it looks like they will be able to visit their father in PoW camp.