Your American Eagle Ceremony

All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

I never had an eagle ceremony. I got my eagle by accident.

It was back on the 250^th, the semiquincentenary, and I was on the border testing out kinetic citizen-aided deportations using a catapult I had built. It was going good, I was getting clearance over the wall almost every time, and that’s when it happened. To be straight with you, I was distracted and wasn’t thinking about range safety like I should and to my horror when I released and flung, I saw a bald eagle soaring into my field of vision. I nailed him. I rushed over to where he was and saw I’d broke his wing and his precious eagle blood was seeping into American soil. Well, at that point I felt the earth shake with the wrath of George Washington and knew I had better heal this eagle quick if I ever wanted to be a son of liberty again. I took him home and tried nursing him back to health but nothing worked until I started feeding him home-made ice cream handcranked on my front porch. It had blood (mine), gunpowder, and dust from patriot graves sprinkled in. He loved it. He would slurp it down and then nod off to me singing him some war hymns as lullabies. Talk about patriot dreams!

So that’s how I met Semiquint. Bros for life!

Some guys have telepathic eagles but Semiquint isn’t fancy like that. He’s just a regular bald eagle. He can split atoms with his mind though so we communicate using a geiger counter.

I’m not ashamed to admit it, my eagle ceremony didn’t happen until well into my 20s. I wasn’t American enough yet. You can be born American but you still have to be made American, people don’t want to admit that. So, yeah, I think we need more awareness and openness about delayed-development Americanism. If it happens to you, don’t give up, just overcome it. We all have to have our Valley Forge, you know, there’s no shame in it. So, anyway, here’s my story in case it helps even one person out there.

I’d tried a few things, had a couple of minor ceremonies, and nothing. It was pretty crushing and maybe that was part of it after that, I just couldn’t seem to put myself wholly into it. I was pretty burned out about the whole thing when, I don’t know, one day I just decided I had to try for real. Do or die.

So if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right. It wasn’t easy, I could tell you tales, but long story short we are out in the Mojave desert on the 4^th of July, I have massive diesel generators pumping enough AC to freeze the place in the open air, I have sound speakers the size of nuke-power cooling towers blasting sound, so loud their volume is measured on the Richter scale, I have corn-fed blondes in color-coded red or white or blue bikinis dancing in the shape of a giant waving flag, the kids are out there dancing their hearts out—that part’s pretty normal except for the tomahawks--, and just when the sun is setting my rock band hits the end of the guitar solo where the electric fife and electric drum join in and I start blasting shotguns into the mikes, and that’s when it happens.

Thundering out of the west in perfect formation comes the Blue Angels with a massive EAGLE taking point. She is perfect in ever way. And then she screams.

It pierces me to my very soul. I take out my bowie knife and slash my chest and out I bleed red, white, and blue.

Manifest Destiny is the best eagle there is and I will fight anyone who says different.

Shucks, there’s nothing much to tell. I met my eagle down in the holler one day and we are going on together until we die. Blood to blood.

Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash