Don’t Tread On My Flag!

When I was a kid I used to love this flag. I didn’t know what the hell it meant really but it had a snake on it and, at the time, I really liked snakes and was always grabbing up the garter snakes that were native to my little home town in California. Even at a fairly early age I was able to draw (as I recall I specialized in roosters) and could make reasonable facsimiles of a lot of stuff I liked, including snakes. Consequently I drew pictures of this flag over and over again, including its sentiment. For some reason it vexed everybody that I did this and, to this day, I’m not really sure why. Either they didn’t like some sassy kid telling them to buzz-off or they were jealous I could do a pretty good job of drawing it. Well, just look at it. What kid wouldn’t like this snake? It has everything, including a certain cuteness along with its incipient, and venomous, danger. Whatever the reason I caught grief for it; I still feel a certain ownership of the memory.

The current use of the flag by that lippy Tea Party has tweaked a certain amount of resentment somewhere in my psyche that I was not aware could be dredged up. Tread on somebody else’s flag you demon spawn!