Friday, July 4, 2008

when, in the course of human events, yo...

Happy Independence Day. It's good not to be under the thumb of a detested regent suffering from mental illness. Or at least, so I am assured. Hee.
I stopped off at the grocery store last night. The 16-ish-year-old fellow hired to put my purchases into a sack had nothing to do, as I generally do not require sacks from the Hy-Vee, because I carry around a giant LL Bean Boat-n-Tote for just such an eventuality. Anyway. So this kid says, "what are you doing for the 4th of July?" and I, being me, say "celebrating our nation's independence from the yoke of British monarchy, how about you?" and this sends him into a fit of giggles. He then told me a story about how his neighbors across the street are British, and didn't know what the deal was with the 4th being a holiday. I was skeptical. Surely if you are in the USA, and you are British, you are clear on the fact that the USA (U-S-A! U-S-A!) has this deal about being ex-British. I mean, maybe you don't know that it falls on the 4th of July, but you probably know that we have, as a country, sort of got this vested and adamant interest in being independent, and that we generally take any opportunity at all to deck ourselves out in red, white and blue, and eat high-fat meats cooked over charcoal. Anyhow.

The kid said his neighbors didn't see what the deal was. I suggested that maybe they were, as the British say, "having him on." I then proposed that if said British expats have a swimming pool, he and his friends go chuck a couple of boxes of teabags into it. Down with the King! Down with the tea tax! And the Stamp Tax! Whoo! Stupid Redcoats! Yankees rule, Tories drool! Kid looked confused. Oh, well.

Stay safe. Don't stick sparklers in the ground and go running around barefoot. Remember: a significant number of maimings occur following the utterance of the following sentence: "Hey, watch this." A significant number of amputations tend to follow the addendum of "Hang on...hold my beer."

4 comments:

Sparkling Squirrel said...

When I was in gardening school in Scotland, an English gardener pointed out to me that the next day was my big Independence Day. I nodded as we talked about fireworks and picnics. He then asked (and he was not having me on) so, who did you get independent from?
While I had long before abandoned any notions that USAans were the only ignorant people in the world, I was somewhat stunned at a Brit who knew it was American independence day, but was somewhat shocked to learn it was from England.

Kathryn said...

I have fantasies of letting strings of Black Cats off in our neighbors' yards--the ones illegally blowing sh*t up in the city limits, and forcing us to medicate our elderly dog with Valium--at, say, 5 am on a random day. Is that wrong? Am I unpatriotic? Maybe because my birthday's on the 3rd and I have not gotten a good night's sleep anywhere within a week of my birthday since I met my husband and our dog because of the yuck-yucks who love to blow sh*t up in our neighborhood.

By the way, I missed your last poll, but I vote for carnivorous spiders. Or maybe just poisonous ones. YOu can have some of ours!

the designated knitter said...

Yes, Katie, it does. It does make you unpatriotic. 'Mericans everywhere are outraged. I bet you don't like NASCAR either, you turrist you. It also means that you better never move out to Jefferson County, where we call a day with unnecessary fireworks "a day that ends in 'y.'" Hee.

Kathryn said...

Have you ever noticed that W's way of saying "American" sounds like "merkin," which, as I'm sure you well know, is a public wig? Is there a secret message here? If so, I'm too underslept to figure it out.

 
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A Microscopic Cog in a Catastrophic Plan by Laura Lorson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at witheringexhaustion.blogspot.com.