Texas students will have four more words to remember when they head back to class this month and begin reciting the state’s pledge of allegiance.

This year’s Legislature added the phrase “one state under God” to the pledge, which is part of a required morning ritual in Texas public schools along with the pledge to the U.S. flag and a moment of silence.

I do my best to keep up with what my state and national lawmakers are doing, and still crap like adding God to the Texas Pledge of Allegiance manages to fly under my radar.

Oh, but it’s no big deal, they say. Students don’t have to say the pledge, if they bring a note from home exempting them. I say students should be allowed to make such decisions for themselves or there shouldn’t be any required pledging going on at all in the classroom, particularly to God.

My mom asked me sometime last year about the Texas Pledge of Allegiance. She didn’t know we even had one and wanted to know if I had been required to say it, in addition to the US one in school. Well, no. Not ever. To be honest, until they made it mandatory and that made the news some years ago, I didn’t know we had one either. Additionally, aside from elementary school, when they forced us all out into the playground no matter the weather to sing the national anthem and say the US pledge, I was never required to do either of those things either … and I was thankful for it.

I never took any of that seriously anyway. All I ever wanted to do was get it over with so we could get back indoors and start class. Anything you are required to say doesn’t have to be taken seriously. You just have to say it. You don’t have to mean it. They can make you say something, but they can’t very well make you mean it, can they? That was something I learned as a kid by watching and listening to my elders … the angry, rebellious Scots-Irish and the fearful, watchful Austrian Jews.

Anyway, here’s our newly revised Texas Pledge:

Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

I have managed to live my entire life in Texas without ever once saying the Texas Pledge of Allegiance, and now that is has a Godly addition to it, the chances of me ever saying have gone from slim to absolutely none. Unless someone is going to force me to say it, and then I will, provided I can remember it, but I won’t mean it. Coerced pledging is no pledging at all. It’s just a form of indoctrination.