Allegiance

I guess I've pretty much always known Left from Right.

When I was in kindergarten, at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the teacher decided out loud that I was the smartest kid in the class and gave me a job. I was to go around the semi-circle we formed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and correct anyone who had messed up putting the right hand over the heart. From time to time I did have to help some of my classmates make an adjustment, and this did not endear me to the humiliated objects of my attention. Being the smartest kid in the class is never a path to popularity among one's peers, and they only reluctantly tapped me when it came time to choose up sides for games in the playground. Eventually the teacher recognized her error and withdrew my mandate. Of course it was too late.

Funny thing about the Pledge back then. It did not include the words "under God." It went straight from "one nation" to "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Did you know that it was only in 1954 that "under God" was added, by an act of Congress signed by President Eisenhower? The argument at the time was that the phrase echoed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It was FDR, by the way, who instituted the hand-over-heart business -- in 1942.

Most people probably think that the way things are is the way they've always been. But they haven't and it's not. So there.