our bad

I am moving to a new position at work at the beginning of July, so I am enjoying a nice period of lame-ducking. Quack, quack, swim in circle, quack. It's working out for me. And I've been having what I haven't had for a long time... fun at work. This is directly linked to not doing my job, but that's neither here nor there.

Today, I feel like I outdid myself. My friend R is a upstanding young Englishman. I always get quite a kick out of finding out how the American revolution was taught in British schools. As American schoolchildren, we are taught that the poor, oppressed Puritans hopped the puddle so they could have religious freedom. They hung out with some native people, planted some corn, ate some turkey, and all was good. Then, the big bad British Empire came and tried to tax the poor, nice Puritans. Bad British Empire! All they wanted was to worship freely! They weren't an extremist cult, or anything like that! Anyway, a while later, we threw some tea in the Boston Harbor as an act of patriotic defiance, Paul Revere went for a trot at midnight, some guys wrote a Constitution, McDonalds started making Freedom Fries, SUVs were born, and the rest is history.

Rich's version of the American Revolution? "Yeah, you guys got whiny about taxes or something, and then threw our tea in the water, so we decided... meh. And went home."

I decided that there have been far too many years of misunderstanding and poor communication, so I decided to right it. I wrote R a letter.

Dear Mr. R,
We, the People of the United States of America do sincerely apologize for throwing your tea in the Boston Harbor (H-A-R-B-O-R, not H-A-R-B-O-U-R). We realize it was not very nice, but in our defence, you were really pissing us off. All we wanted to do was create a society where rich, white, xenophobic zealots could have democracy and religious freedom. And by "Democracy" we mean "if it's convenient for rich, white, xenophobic zealots," and by "religious freedom," we mean "as long as it's Protestant." We did think that by saying "all men are created equal," we were clear that we meant "all rich, white men are created equal, and everyone else can go to hell," but I guess we will just chalk that up to growing pains. Anyway, we know you were really counting on using us as a mill for materials, but it really was not convenient to us. But about the tea, we really do feel sorry about that. So please accept this Earl Grey teabag as an apology. We hope you enjoy the F-L-A-V-O-R.

Our bad.
The Citizens of the United States of America.

Maybe I'm an asshat. But I sure made myself giggle.