About a week ago, my friend and I went shopping. We were walking around when we came across a group of protesters. They didn’t have signs, they weren’t loud and there really weren’t a lot of them. Really, the only thing they were doing was standing on the American flag. There were maybe 7 of them and all of them were standing on the flag that represents everything that America is.

We were walking, laughing and cutting up, and all of a sudden we came across the protestors and Hannah shuts up; she gets really quiet and she just stares. She stares blankly at a group of men, who just simply stare back. It’s cold, her jaw clenches and she’s barely holding back tears. “Hannah what’s wrong?” I asked. There was no response. She kept walking and I hesitated, confused and kind of startled. “Hannah…. Hannah” I almost shouted. “What’s wrong?”. She stopped and turned around and stared at me and that’s when I saw it. It hit me, I saw the necklace with her dad's name on it, the one she never takes off and all of sudden I felt a pit in my stomach.

Hannah stared at me and with every second of silence the pit in my stomach grew bigger. She just stared, she couldn’t move, I could see her start to physically break down. We went back to the car, where she cried and I listened. I’m curious, so naturally, I asked questions. Her answer, the one that brought tears to my eyes was, “My dad was deployed and never came back, instead of him coming home, I got a flag. I got a flag that sits in my house staring us down.” I knew what flag she was talking about. It sat folded in a glass box with wooden trim lining the edges. It was placed promptly, front and center on the fireplace, it was directly next to a family picture and a picture of just her dad in what looks like a foreign land.

That conversation left me shaken, I couldn’t quite grasp what was just said to me and then suddenly I realized I’d never be able to grasp what she said. In all of her life events, she will take a picture with a flag instead of her father. Her brother or her uncle will walk her down the aisle, and I, well I’m fortunate enough to have my dad to do all those things with. Her family sent away a man, a father, a husband. He was someone’s uncle, son, someone's brother and in return, they received a folded up flag. I’m almost positive that’s a trade no one wants to make.

I understand, that people want to protest and they have that right, but please stop defacing the flag. Your right to protest was given to you by people who died defending the flag you now stand on, so please, please stop. Protest, stage a sit in, walk through D.C. Do what you feel you need to do, but leave the flag out of it. The flag may only be a piece of cloth to you, but to anyone who has ever served, it represents their life’s work. The flag to anyone who has ever lost a loved one overseas, well it's all they have left. So please, leave it alone. When you deface the flag you're not hurting the government, you're hurting the people who now hold the flag instead of their loved ones.