I, like my editor, value the freedoms of the U.S. and agree that citizens should be allowed to participate in peaceful protests.

However, unlike my editor, I cannot get past Colin Kaepernick’s choice of demonstration.

Taking a knee during the National Anthem disgusts me.

I know he wants to draw attention to the Black Lives Matter movement, which is definitely an issue worthy of a protest, but I wonder if the San Francisco 49ers football player has ever really thought about the profound disrespect he is displaying.

I have never served in the military and cannot personally speak to Kaepernick’s offensiveness from the perspective of one in the military, but I do have family members that have served.

My Uncle Jim, who retired as a colonel from the Air Force, served a year in Vietnam.

As a young person, I did not pay attention to, nor could I even begin to understand, Uncle Jim’s experiences while on the Asian continent. I realize no one could understand the horrors of war unless you have been called to serve in war.

That being said, while my uncle was overseas, my aunt wrote letters, and they both recorded messages on cassette tapes to stay connected.

Unlike today’s technology, this was probably the only way they could hear the comfort of each other’s voices even if they could not interact back and forth like we can on the phone.

One night while visiting my aunt during one of these tapings, she let me speak into the recorder, and I also sang to my uncle a little song.

I sang a little jingle I had learned in school, the one that goes “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pea knuckle on your snout.”

Not long after that visit, I received a letter in the mail. It was from my uncle and had come all the way from Vietnam.

In it was the usual “How are you?” and “How is the family?” He thanked me for taking the time to talk on the tape, and he also made mention of my little song and its gruesome words.

Until then, it had never ever crossed my mind at how morbid that song would have sounded to someone in his situation.

While I was snuggled up to my aunt, he was in the hot jungle not knowing what the next minute may bring.

Sometimes we do things without truly understanding a situation, and in my case as a child, I had no concept of the horrors of war.

However, as adults we should at least be more careful of our words and actions to situations we have not experienced, especially when some of us have louder voices than others.

For me, this is the case for Kaepernick.

He is using his notoriety to loudly make his point.

And it seems ironic to me that he wants respect for one group and then chooses to disrespect another group.

Get up off your knee, Kaepernick, and find a less offensive way to rally support for the cause.