Dinosaurs and Derpy Things

no getting up. no looking at the flag.

not to talk tough but i have sat through every pledge of allegiance in my life, and that includes the bush administration's hyper-patriotic war on terror.

you can NOT be compelled to say the pledge, and that also means you can't be given the 'choice' of doing it or taking a punishment. being sent into the hall is a grey area.

if you are punishing for refusing, parents or a more sympathetic teacher (like say a history or english teacher) can step in to intercede with the principal. do not be afraid to escalate.

i was in high school for both columbine and 9/11 and have a very interesting perspective on how performative patriotism always seems to turn into enforced behavior. i was taking ASL classes and they made us perform 'God Bless the USA' for our final

except. i wasn't about that shit. i paid attention.

i started sitting out the pledge. and then started getting in trouble for it for 'being un-american'. my response, and my mother's pissed-off argument, was that choosing NOT to do the pledge is the MOST american thing you can do. you are exercising your FREEDOM, including freedom to abstain. i wasn't pleased with what was being done in the name of patriotism.

then they tried to make the 'meet me at the flag' christian morning prayer meetings mandatory.

a group of us, who were either atheists, christians who didn't believe in enforced prayer, or non-christians, walked two blocks down to mcdonalds and got breakfast instead, as a protest. we didn't raise a fuss, we simply walked out, got food, walked back. didn't leave a mess, made sure we were back to class on time. we chose to use this time for something productive instead of paying lip service to things we didn't believe in.

my school haaaaaaated us but yknow what, they dropped all those shitty mandatory policies.

“If that armor is so heavy, why wear it all day? These aren’t mere bruises anymore…” 

“…”

MY DAD DECIDED TO PUT TFA ON AGAIN (this is like the second time this week) 

AND MY MOM DECIDED TO MAKE IT HOLIDAY FESTIVE BY PUTTING UP A LITTLE SANTA HAT TO PLAY THE SANTA HAT DRINKING GAME WHERE YOU TAKE A DRINK EVERY TIME THE SANTA HAT LINES UP WITH A CHARACTER

we’re not even five minutes in and all of our drinks are almost gone we have to be more picky about what we take a drink for 

I’M LITERALLY LOSING MY GODDAMN SHIT RIGHT NOW

leaves and flowers and trees growing out of abandoned houses and cars, smashing glass windows, invading and reclaiming the spaces humanity took from them

warning scrawled hastily on the sides of buildings in spraypaint or in blood; don’t come here, it’s not safe. turn away, go back. we died here. you will too.

notes and messages scattered across the world, addressed to people who never saw them or never lived to reply to them. rachel, we’re alive. david, don’t look for us. amy, dad got bit, please come home, we need you. kim, i love you. 

people broken into tiny groups. society shattered. they are past the anger, past denial, past trying to fix any of it. now there is only begrudging acceptance, and the knowledge that nothing is ever going to get better. the only thing they can do is survive.

a skeleton lying at the foot of a tree, flowers blooming in its ribcage. a bloodstained note in its front pocket. ‘sorry, mom’. travelers see it and barely spare a thought; such things are commonplace.

roaming packs of dogs and cats still wearing their collars, centuries of domestication breaking down under the need to live and to keep living

families born of blood and sacrifice. trading stories over campfires about who they used to be, who they might have been, what they could have become if none of this ever happened. looks of understanding when someone loses a sister, a brother, a father. it happened to me, too.

abandoned bedrooms combed over for supplies, but the faded posters still hanging on the walls and the useless knickknacks on the shelves tell the stories of the people who lived there years ago