American flag T-shirts, common sense, a no-go on Cinco de Mayo in Cali

The race was just days after 9/11 and a teammate's mother had printed the stickers and requested that we wear them. I was a senior -- and team captain -- and knew the Idaho High School Activities Association's uniform rule well enough to know that without approval from the governing body, the stickers were unauthorized and as such, we could be disqualified for wearing them.

I also didn't care. Patriotism and emotions were at an all-time high across the country. I had just watched everything I thought I knew about the world come crashing down on live television. I, like most Americans that week, was confused and the only thing that made sense to me was running. And if someone requested that I did so with an American flag on my shorts, I was going to do it.

I took the stickers and handed them to the rest of my teammates. Everyone wore them in the same spot, as if being uniformed in being un-uniformed would help our cause.

I ran the fastest race of my career that day. When I was done, I waited near the finish line for the rest of my teammates, as I did every race that season.

While I was waiting there, the race director, whose name I know but will not share, approached me. He said, "Robert, you know those flag stickers are unauthorized and I could disqualify the entire team for wearing them, right?"

My reply was all of two words.

"I know," I said.

And then, I just looked at him.

And he looked at me.

And I knew what he was thinking.

He had a choice to make. As the race director, he could enforce the rule and disqualify us. Or he could stay quiet and do nothing.

He chose to do nothing, which is why this is the first anyone's heard of this story. Had he disqualified a high school cross country team for wearing stickers of the U.S. flag just days after 9/11 and 10 miles away from an Air Force Base in an Air Force community, there no doubt would have been a huge uproar.

The potential uproar it would have caused is the reason I believe he chose to do nothing. (Though, I could be wrong. Maybe the exact same thing could happen next fall and everyone could wear Justin Bieber stickers and maybe he'd do the same thing and decide it's not worth the trouble of enforcing the rule over stickers. I don't know.)

I believe the main reason he didn't disqualify us is because he had enough common sense to realize rules are no longer just black and white when it comes to the red, white and blue.

Perhaps the race director could share those thoughts of wisdoms with authorizes at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., where yesterday five boys were sent home from school for wearing American flag T-shits on Cinco de Mayo.

The boys maintain they were sitting together at a table on break and were asked to turn them inside out. When they refused, they were sent to the principal's office and then home. They said they weren't the only ones wearing the shirts, but drew attention to themselves because there were five of them in one place.

School administrators, the boys said, called wearing the shirts "incendiary," worried they would lead to fights. They said the shirts would be OK on any other day, but that it was a sensitive day to Mexican-Americans because it's their holiday, so therefore they couldn't wear them.

School administrations aren't talking, and the school board has wisely distanced themselves from their actions, so many questions from this event may go unanswered.

Questions such as: "Were the boys really just sitting there peacefully, or were they indeed looking for a fight?" "Were the students really displaying their patriotisms, or were they trying to send a message to their Mexican-American classmates?" "Why would five high school friends wear the same American flag T-shirt on Cinco de Mayo if they didn't want to cause some sort of reaction?" "Were the boys sent home for being disrespectful to authorizes after being asked to turn their shirts inside out?" and "Is it OK to wear flag T-shirts on St. Patty's Day?"

These are questions that the school officials won't ever get to answer, because all everyone is going to hear is five American male high school students saying, "I got sent home from school for wearing the American flag on my shirt."

But the administrators could have avoided all these questions had they asked themselves one simple question yesterday: "Are we really about to send children home from school for wearing the American flag on their shirts?"