Stabbed myself in the palm putting my jacket on yesterday. But that's ok. Remembrance day is Nov 11, take a silent minute at 11:11 to think about what and who's sacrifice.

Flanders Fields while you're at it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields

It also led me to this 2015 article in which some Canadians considered it "defacing" the symbol to use a safer pin design than an inches long stick pin. I'm just glad USians aren't the only that get mouth-frothing stupid about arbitrary symbols.

There's also been a controversial movement of wearing white poppies, or "peace" poppies. The idea is that if red poppies are specifically for soldiers then white poppies are for all victims of war, most of whom are non-combatants.

The Royal Canadian Legion sells a black centre pin for use with the disposable poppys that are distributed every year. I have had one for a long time, it's the greatest.

Edit to say: I've only seen the defacing argument with regard to using a random pin (ex. a tiny Canadian flag pin) instead of something that maintains the integrity of the symbol by still looking like a poppy.

It irks me every year seeing people who love the military wear poppies. If you really care about dead troops you should probably stop supporting the troop killing machine.

The poem is called In Flanders Fields written by Canadian war doctor LCJohn McCrae during WWI.

As kids in school we were given these with the long pin. Lots of us learned that the skin in your palm is pretty thick and you can pierce a layer of skin without it hurting or bleeding, and then you could wear your poppy embedded in your hand.

Gives me the creeps thinking back on that.

Yeah, to you it’s an arbitrary symbol but to others, from the very point of inception, it was a visible reminder of the once very human friend, partner, parent, sibling etc that had been killed in conflict and would no longer be part of your life ever again.

Grave stones are just lumps of rock, but people get upset when I take a piss on one - go figure. Emotional humans are weird.

I hadn't actually realised this was a uniquely Canadian thing

Seriously not a fan of people stretching out when they wear the poppy. It's for November 11.

The "defacing" argument is just because they're worried their going to sell less flowers. It's so dumb. The legion even sold them once until they thought it would drop the market out of plastic flowers. The Legion does great things for lots of small communities, but they are also sometimes a bunch of geriatric assholes with their heads up their asses.