When I was in sixth grade, we said "one nation, under God, indivisible" in the Pledge of Allegiance, much like the rest of the nation. Dr. Michael Newdow's argument on the subject before the Supreme Court on Wednesday is excerpted here. The fact that Newdow thinks that too much social pressure would come to weigh upon the tiny shoulders of any little kid who decided to just shut up for a second while everyone else in the room said "under God," well, this Newdow guy should have met James. James was a fifth grader in my class. He wore his NASA t-shirt for the class photo and was always on the lookout for ingeniously appropriate ways to quote Mr. Spock from Star Trek. On top of that, he boldly proclaimed that he didn't have to say the Pledge because it was against his (Jehovah's Witness?) religion to pledge allegiance to anyone/thing but God. And after awhile we'd all had about enough of James's pointy-eared "you're being an illogical human" persona, so I don't think anyone really cared what he did during the Pledge. He was just borderline exasperating-but-still-(to me)-funny enough to convince us that he didn't care what we thought (maybe he'd already taken so much shit anyway), and he seemed to have no problem just sitting at his desk drawing Klingons on his PeeChee while the rest of us said a bunch of words we didn't understand.

It's twenty-eight years too late, but bravo, James, for being relentlessly Spock-like!