Several weeks ago, in a last date with a clingy girlfriend named “September” before the inevitable breakup, the Family and I decided to go to Lake DeGray. I say breakup because this summer has gone on long enough, and I do not have the energy to deal with 80-plus degree heat and “pumpkin spice everything” at the same time. I might be able to deal with one, but not both.

The family had everything packed: pumpkin spice cokes and pumpkin spice towels, all loaded into the pumpkin spiced car. The drive to Lake DeGray was pleasant, though I made the horrible mistake of listening to the Hellscape known as talk radio. In Hell, there is a topic of much debate right now about an orange man saying that some flag needs to be respected. The radio host “Satan” brought on a panel of daemons to discuss whether or not the flag needs to be cherished.

Sipping my pumpkin spiced coffee, I chuckled as the argument ebbed; I am militantly apolitical. I am an ardent believer in the longheld American pastime of standing for nothing and laughing at everything. Standing for nothing is in my opinion, as American as pumpkin-spiced apple pie.

So I when I finally got to Lake DeGray, my beliefs that I live in the United States of America were shattered; I genuinely believe that anno domini two-thousand and sixteen was the Rapture; all the celebrities who died that year all rose to Heaven and left us in a palpable Hell.

Sitting across the sand in a lawn chair was a man who was almost offensively American. His yellow-white hair flowing in the pumpkin-spice wind, he sported an American flag head wrap and thick black sunglasses. Soaked in a gruel of sweat, he wore a green shirt with bond, white font which read: “I STAND FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!” Amazingly, he was also wearing American flag swimming trunks. This man then got up, turned around to his family with a grin, and shouted “Time to go the bathroom!”

He strode as cool as a pumpkin-spiced cucumber down to the lakeside, American flag swimming trunks flapping in the breeze, his white mane of wisdom flowing in the fading summer wind. Submerging himself deep into the briny foam of the sea, he stood silently, staring off into the distance, his wet “I STAND FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM!” shirt sticking to his back as he literally urinated on the American flag.

He made sure to straighten out his American flag swimming trunks to respect the flag he had just desecrated as he came back up the shore. And there I was, a book in one hand and a hotdog in the other, thanking God and Sonny Jesus that Colin Kaepernick did not go out on the field and do what that man just did.