Red Ribbon Week comes every year in October.  The further along you get in your schooling, the less “cool” it is to wear the ribbon.  So you find the cool spot to put it or you don’t bother at all.  I guess for some people promoting drug awareness is sort of counter productive or maybe even hypocritical.  For some people it might be embarassing though I’ll never figure out how. 
Did you know it started to honor the sacrifice of federal agents who were killed before a drug raid?  I didn’t either.  Until a few minutes ago.  The teachers only read some blurb on a piece of paper in the brown bag that held our red ribbons we were supposed to wear.  I don’t remember it saying anything about someone dying before a drug raid in Mexico.  Maybe it did, but probably not.  Don’t wanna scare kindergartners with the truth I guess. 
The older I got, the less I looked forward to this particular week.  It wasn’t exactly cool to wear the ribbon and although I never really cared about being cool, I wasn’t exactly a fan of the prospect of being considered a nerd or brown noser either.  So I would put the ribbon on my shoe or my backpack.  Not on my shirt.  It didn’t have a high place of honor, I only sort of understood the meaning behind it.  But I didn’t know then there was more too it than just drug awareness.  I’m all for that, don’t get me wrong but shouldn’t there be something about how it got started!  Don’t bore kids to death with some long history lesson cause they will only tune it out and hear certain parts but something should be said about the men whose lives are gone that sparked the start of Red Ribbon Week in 1985.
Give kids a reason for something like Red Ribbon Week they can wrap their brains around, even at 5, and it make them see it differently.  You don’t have to be gory or specific but say something about the lives lost…okay?
If I could go back and do it again, now that I understand more about it, I would say screw being cool or looking like a nerd.  I’d wear the ribbon right on my shirt.  And make sure everyone saw it and knew I was standing up for drug awareness.  Knew I was honoring lives lost.