normal-horoscopes:

When I was in middle school we would do these weekly things called “Flag Salutes” where the entire school came out to the quad to stand in big ranks and sing patriotic songs. I lived in one of the most conservative counties in America and the teachers took the Flag Salutes very seriously.

We hated them. We didn’t really clock the nationalist nature of the thing but we we hated being asked to stand in a big group and sing songs for nobody. It was boring and goofy. Thinking about it now, it really was just our teachers using us as fodder for a Mass Ritual to Prevent 9/11 from Happening Again.

Eventually, some kids developed a sort of game. The ceremony had all these little dramatic pauses between sections of a speech or in-between songs. Kids would wait for those little pauses and, right before the song started, just shout “NINE ELEVEN!” There was a voice for it to. You had to sound kinda like a Patrick Star or a similar exaggerated dunderhead type character.

It made the teachers incredibly mad but nobody ever got in trouble. The trick was to drop the Nine Eleven the moment before the song started so they couldn’t stop to focus on who was yelling. Once they start the ritual they couldn’t stop it or the spell would backfire and the Taliban Would Get You or whatever.