Please Rise and Remove Your Brains

Maybe this isn’t worth ranting about.

Maybe you’ve never thought about it.

Maybe you don’t care.

Damn it, Jim, I’m just a doctor.  I have a blog to write here.

I don’t know when it started, or if it has always been that way, but every time you go to a sporting event where the national anthem is played, the announcer asks you to please rise and remove your hats.  I think they used to ask you to please rise for the playing and/or singing of our national anthem.  That’s okay–let me know it’s coming so I can be ready.  But when did it become necessary to remind us to take off our hats?

Do we really need to be instructed on how to behave for our national anthem?

I honestly don’t remember people announcing this years ago.  Maybe I didn’t listen.  Maybe I didn’t care.  Maybe I wasn’t even wearing a hat because back then . . . I HAD HAIR.

I swear this is a relatively recent phenomenon.  I recall being at a Penn State game a number of years ago and hearing this for what I think was the first time, and thinking to myself, ‘do we really need to be told how to do this?’  It almost seemed embarrassing that we needed to tell our fans how to do this.  I mean, at some point, kindergarten or grade school, you are taught these kinds of things, along with praying in school, saying the pledge of allegiance and holding your hand over your heart.  At some point, you needed to learn where your heart is.  But I don’t think they teach anatomy until junior high or high school.

It’s not that I have a problem saluting our nation or showing respect.  I think that’s very important.  I take my hat off.  And I would do so even if I was not instructed to do so.    That is not the point.  We shouldn’t need to be told how to do this.  The point is, have we reached a point in our society where we have to point these things out?

Apparently, we do.

According to some of the warnings on this blog, a jar of peanuts may contain nuts.  A roll of life savers is not for use as a flotation device.  A hair dryer cautions us not to use in the shower or while sleeping.  What if I’m dreaming of taking a shower and need to blow dry my hair?  A portable stroller instructs us to remove the child before folding.  So that’s what I was doing wrong!  No wonder I could never get it folded.  Of course, men never read directions anyway.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like being told how to honor my country.

I can and will do it for myself, thank you.