WHAT IF . . .

I'm in the middle of reading John Adams, and it is just . . . blowing my mind. Every biography I read manages to make the synapses in my brain explode with more questions, more curiosities, more feelings of amazement at the fact that people actually lived through, well, HISTORY.

I picture Mr. Adams, putzing around his little house in Massachusetts, writing the state constitution, the oldest functioning state constitution in America.

I envision Mr. Adams, hanging out in Paris with Thomas Jefferson, touring the countryside, shopping in the city, and bargaining a little thing called the Treaty of Paris, thus symbolically ending the American revolution against Britain.

I see Mr. and Mrs. Adams, sipping tea in London, receiving letters about Shay's Rebellion back home in Massachusetts.

I anticipate good ol' Mr. Adams going on to be PRESIDENT of the United States.

It's just crazy.

So I mention this to Hooch: isn't it amazing that actual human men and women and children saw history happen and didn't even know it; that people paved the road of the future without knowing where it would lead; and that individuals changed the course of history and didn't even realize how significant it would be, or how their efforts would bear fruit?

Hooch's response: "Imagine if America never declared her independence, and we were still owned by the British?"

Hmmm. We pondered.

We decided that the U.S. would probably be half the size it is now (most likely ending somewhere around the Mississippi River), France would be next door, Spain would be below us, and we would be . . . well, we would be CANADA.

That would suck, if we were just one big CANADA.
That would suck a lot.

Poor Canada.
We always make fun of Canada. After all, it's just . . . there. And they've got those damn Mounties.
I call it the Switzerland of North America (without all the culture and leiderhosen).
Hooch calls it the "Justice Clarence Thomas of North America." You know, never has an opinion of its own, etc.
Harsh. But true.
(Although if I were you, Canada, I'd be really insulted. WE don't even like to claim him.)
Poor Canada.

(So thank you, American Revolutionary heroes, for saving us from becoming CANADA.)