One day I was in my college library. It was during summer courses and I was killing time between my two classes. A small class of children, maybe around 3rd grade came in, I assume as part of some summer activity group. Well a few of the boys sat across from me on one of the other sofas and the shirt of one of the boy's shirts caught my attention. It was bright red, with the yellow sickle and hammer with CCCP (the Cryllic alphabet for USSR) written underneath.

Now, we were in the quiet portion of the library so I did not say anything but if I had seen that kid anywhere else I would have had to say something. It's not the kids fault, I know I barely knew anything about the Soviet Union at that age. But the fact that he had parents who knowingly purchased this shirt for him and the adults supervising the group knew about it astonished me. And I highly doubt that his parents bought him that for the irony of capitalizing off of a communist symbol.

As for what I would have said to the young man probably would have been that that was the symbol of the Soviet Union, a horrible dictatorship that starved and killed millions of it's own people and almost started nuclear war with the world. I'm sure you don't know that much about it but that really isn't something you should be wearing." All while being as non confrontational as possible