Coming back from work today I walked by three lightly-thugged-out young men. A taxi passed flying a blue and white flag from the passenger side window. The young guys pointed at it and started making snide remarks. One of the guys, who had cafe-con-leche skin and was dressed in athletic gear the same blue as the flag, said, "I'm gonna do it, dude." One of his friends shouted a word in a language I didn't know as the kid in blue made a beeline for the cab, which had come to rest in gridlock.

The flag was Israeli.

The kid grabbed it. The cab's tires screeched, and the driver leapt out of the car, but the kid had sprinted all the way to the end of the block and stood looking triumphantly back over cars and crowds of pedestrians.

I had a momentary impulse to tell the kids off, and then a backwash of confusion as I realized I was relying on conflicting clues to decode the scene. Then a moment of guilt, as I remembered how many times in the past months I've been inclined to rip American flags off houses, trucks, and lapels...