Cut tightly around her supple breasts and lovely waist, her flag-embossed shirt convincingly announced her allegiance to the good old USA.
"My favorite holiday," she exclaimed, knocking another one back in celebration.
"My favorite shirt," I said, lifting a brow. I liked her laughter. I liked the way she ate her hot dog.
While it was not meant to be between us, I always admired this Boston-born babe. I'd known people before her who wrapped themselves in the red, white and blue on the 4th, but rarely with such revolutionary zeal--or irony.
For in many ways, she was a rebel in love with an ideal.
Or so I wanted to believe. Wasn't the American Revolution still a living, breathing thing? Something to cherish, but also something to watch carefully in perpetuity, something to preserve as more than the simple-minded jingoistic refrain heard all too often in every stratum of our society--USA, USA, USA!
This is something to think about in our age of overwhelming surveillance and "preventive" war and, dare I say, seeming constitutional illegality. It's something to think about on this day.
Like my old friend, democracy is not easy.
Like her, it might slip away.
Perhaps it already has.
TS
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