Did you have a POW/MIA bracelet? Did you get called a commie-pinko?
I had one when I was about 9. My friends all had them, too, and since I was the youngest, they had me convinced that if I ever took it off, my guy would die. I wore it to bed, I wore it in the bath, I squeezed it every so often just to make sure.
One day, my mom brought home a hammock, and in all our swinging and playing in the hammock, my bracelet came off. I spent hours crawling around with a flashlight looking for that bracelet. The next day, I looked some more. Never found it.
My mom figured out what was going on and told me, no, he was not going to die because I lost my bracelet, and got me another one, which I managed to hold on to till we sent them all in to be melted down into a statue.
I wish I could remember their names. I wish I could tell their moms, their wives, their children, that I wore their men's names on my wrist to remind everybody I met that they mattered. Not that wearing a bracelet amounts to a hill of beans.
I got pegged for wearing that bracelet, but it only goes to show how hollow the phrase "Support the troops" really is.
If I tie a yellow ribbon to a tree, I'm a patriot, even though the song had to do with an ex-con. In the meantime, I wear a bracelet bearing the name of a soldier who has disappeared, I'm an asshole.
I realize the yellow ribbon concept didn't come into play till the Iran hostage situation, but still.