THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

"Give me liberty or give me a roundabout!" Patrick Henry; revised

I am currently in the "First in Flight" state....North Carolina. Here they seem to have forgotten that we won the Revolution and are free from the tyrannical rule of the English Crown. They seem to need a firm reminder that we won our independence and no longer need to appease the king (never mind the fact that England doesn't even HAVE a king right now!)!

Perhaps they should watch the CFC intern program that I watched tonight. In it, the interns re-enact the soul-stirring speech Patrick Henry gave when he gave the charge to the Colonists (as we USED to be called) to revolt against the shackles of the English government. It was so inspiring to see this "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death" speech as it must have been originally presented, that I was feeling very patriotic when we left.

Then I got into our mini-van. Maybe it was the fact that the van is Japanese. Or maybe it was because our GPS is an Australian mate named, 'Lee'. In any case, things began to take a turn for the worse. And a turn. And a turn. And a turn......

Oh, sure, it started out innocently enough. We even stopped at the American institution, Wal*Mart. But, it is hard to feel very red, white and blue, when your driving guide announces in an Aussie accent that you have arrived at "W-Al Mort Sipper Cent-ear". From there, things just got worse. I even saw Miley Cyrus in a British Union Jack shirt! Hello! She is an American COUNTRY singer! I even doubt she knows exactly where England is! Freedom people! We fought and died for it! I don't love country music, by any means, but those people usually bleed stars and stripes!

After we got our water, which, by the way, was bottled by Nestle, a SWISS company for goodness sakes.....we hopped back in our Toyota van and sidled up to 'Lee' as he led us through the back country to our hotel. (all the while passing restaurants like, The Olive Garden and Outback.....whatever happened to McDonald's? Oh! They are probably Scottish! Okay....getting off the soapbox now).

Now, I LOVE the melting pot that we are. I love that we have Australian GPS', Japanese cars (and sushi!!), Italian pizza and pasta, Chinese husbands and curly red-haired Scottish bagpipe players. Normally, I would never complain about our inclusive American culture. I almost always feel very blessed by it. BUT....there is one thing I cannot stand. It is a European import that I will NEVER embrace.

And I got STUCK on it tonight. Oh yeah....you know it.....

The dreaded roundabout.

I hate it.

I was driving back to the hotel and Catey and I were scaring our friends, the Sieberts, who unlike Catey and I, actually become tired at the end of a day spent driving for 3 hours and attending day one of a conference. They all smiled at mine and Catey's constant chatter, but I think I saw them rolling their eyes at each other.....and even as I type......Karri is missing. She said she was making a phone call, but I think she is curled in a fetal position somewhere wondering how she got stuck with us for a week. But, I digress.

I was driving the van, to give Karri a break. We kind of have a deal. One drives and one navigates (and Levi constantly assists from the very, very back of the van!). So, there we are driving on the back roads. There isn't much to this part of North Carolina. Mayberry is no stretch of the imagination.....neither are their roads. Straight shots. Until.......

In the middle of God's Country, all of the sudden we come to a ROUNDABOUT! You know....those ridiculous (a word which the Sieberts are having much fun laughing at me saying, by the way) traffic obstacle courses. One minute we are looking at hillbilly haven, and the next minute we are dropped on to the epitome of traffic refinement, the roundabout.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to giggle for long at this paradox before I was caught.

I am not sure exactly how many times we actually went around the roundabout, but it was a lot! Everytime we would get to the other side of the roundabout, 5 different fingers would point in 5 different directions yelling at me to try to get off the roundabout. But, there was no escape. Round and round we went. Again and again. Over and over. I am pretty sure it wasn't me who started crying first....but by the time we finally got off, we all had tears running down our face!

And that was when I realized it. Roundabouts are an English plot. To distract the "Colonists" to fits of insanity. Sooner or later, we will all be stuck on a roundabout with Lobster-back troops marching in and then you will hear me screaming at the tops of my lungs.....

THE BRITISH ARE COMING! THE BRITISH ARE COMING!