Transcript: "Nathan and the Pledge", a Story By Matthew Dicks

This is a transcript of Matthew Dicks's story, Nathan and the Pledge, at a Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in NYC. You can watch Matthew telling the story here:

The phone rings, and when I pick it up, there's a man on the other end. He's angry. He's a parent, the father of one of my fifth graders, and he's pissed. I know this guy; I taught his daughter a couple of years ago, so he's not the kind of man who flies off the handle. What he's saying is real, and as I listen to what he tells me has happened to his son on this day, he doesn't realize that he's sort of opening up my heart and exposing a wound that I've been trying to bury for a very long time.

I first learned about the Pledge of Allegiance—the truth of it—back in Boy Scout camp. A counselor teaching the citizenship merit badge explained to us that the words "under God" were placed into the pledge later than it was originally formulated in 1954. The Knights of Columbus stuck "God" in, hoping to bring religion to America. As a 15-year-old boy and an atheist, I was pissed when I discovered this. I was that kind of atheist who walks around and tells religious people how stupid they are, how their magic [expletive] is just [expletive], and they should believe everything that I believe.

So it really hit me hard, and I asked the counselor, "Isn't that a violation of my First Amendment?" He was only like 18 or 19, but he said, "Well, you don't have to say the Pledge." I thought, "You're right. I'm never saying the Pledge of Allegiance again."

And so I had a chance to take my stand that night. At the dining hall, we say the Pledge of Allegiance before dinner, and I decide I'm not going to say it. The scoutmaster comes to the front, taps on the microphone, and says, "Please rise," and everyone rises except for me. For like two seconds, I’ll tell myself later that I rose because all the penises were eye level when they stood up, and it made me unsettled. That wasn’t really true. I stood because I was afraid not to stand.

And that was strange for me because I’m a person who tries to aggressively do what other people don’t do. I grew up just outside of Boston, and I decided as a kid to be a New York Yankees fan just to spite the people around me. You cannot imagine how hard it is to be in Boston and be a New York Yankees fan. I was a kid who, in middle school, taught himself to read books upside down just to piss off teachers. I’m the special breed of [expletive] who will spend hours and hours of effort to get 30 seconds of irritation with someone later on in life. In high school, I used to eat potatoes like apples just because I knew it made people unsettled to be around me.

So I should be able to not pledge as a Boy Scout at 15 years old, but I can't, because I’m afraid they’re going to think I don’t love my country. And I do. I really do love where I am. But I want to say this thing that I believe, and I can’t. I go through the rest of my high school years pledging the allegiance, and every time it makes me crazy. When you graduate from high school, you tend not to have to say the Pledge anymore—until you become an elementary school teacher, which I did in 1999. And now I have to pledge every damn day.

Every time I pledge with these kids, I think about how I don’t want to pledge, but I don’t want anyone to think I’m not a patriot. So I go through 15 years of pledging every day with kids, until I meet Nathan. Nathan is a kid who was like me as a kid. He doesn’t give a [expletive] about what people think. My girls decide that Tuesdays are “Tutu Tuesdays”—they wear their tutus on Tuesdays. Three weeks in, Nathan starts wearing tutus for the rest of the year. I know he got shit for it, but he did it the whole way through.

Nathan’s the first person I’ve ever met who doesn’t pledge the flag. He sits in the way I wish I could. When I ask him on the first day why he’s sitting, he says, “I’m not allowed to vote, so until they let me vote, I’m not going to pledge allegiance to this country.” Amazing.

So I watch Nathan sit all year long until the day his father calls me, yelling at me. I was absent—I was at professional development, changing my life, I’m sure, in some significant way—and while I was gone, the substitute teacher forced Nathan to stand up and pledge. His father’s angry, Nathan’s angry, and I’m angry, because now I feel like I’ve let this kid down. I should have been sitting with him all along.

I go to school the next day, and first thing, I sit him down at my desk. I say, “Nathan, listen, I’m sorry that happened to you. I apologize to you on behalf of the teacher who’s not here, and I thank you for not creating a problem like agreeing to pledge rather than disrupting the classroom. Thank you for what you’ve done.” He listens. He’s a good kid, and he gets it.

Then the intercom comes on, and the principal says, “Please rise for the pledge.” I stand, and Nathan sits, as I expect. But as I stand, I look over Nathan’s head, and not a single kid in my class is standing for the pledge. And it’s not because they’re protesting the pledge. It’s because they’re protesting what happened to Nathan the day before—the indignity.

For the first time in my life, I sit back down, and I don’t pledge allegiance. For the rest of that school year, none of us in that class pledge allegiance, which is really awkward sometimes because a teacher or even the principal will be in the room when the pledge starts. They will stand and see the class—and me—just sitting respectfully, waiting for it to be done. I know the principal is thinking, “What the hell is going on in this classroom?” I know my colleagues are sometimes wondering, “What the hell is Matt doing to these kids? Why is he creating this band of rebels?”

But what I would tell them if they actually brought those words to me? I would say I didn’t do anything to these kids. It’s what they did to me. They gave me the courage to do something that I wanted to do as a 15-year-old boy, a 20-year-old man, and a 30-year-old man. It wasn’t until I met Nathan Usman at the age of 41 that I found the courage—through Nathan—to do the thing I wanted to do.

Nathan taught me that sometimes you can stand up for your country by sitting down.

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