THANKS TO THE ENGLISH FOR...

While I was in church this morning, I had a bunch of  Brit/USA thoughts flit across  my mental horizon.  Somehow I wonder why the English get so much of our attention.  After all, they were not the first to the party.  But they sure stole the show, didn't they?  Right out of the gate they have the largest, oldest operating company on the North American continent (Hudson's Bay Trading).  They aren't even the first Christians to make it here.  Not even the first missionaries.  Just as they were behind Raul Amundsen to the  South Pole, they were behind Leif Erickson to North America.  Perhaps, thankfully for them, Leif was more interested in the fish than in the land.  Or maybe he had a solid home life, who knows?  Then, of course, the Spaniards claimed the sunny south.  Their predilection for warm weather must have had something to do with the way the flags were planted.  The Portuguese were in on the game too, but no one could tell them apart from the Spaniards except for the fact that their language was so sloppy, that no one could understand them.  It is possible that they made friends in Brazil because of their delivery of cheap labor from Africa.  So, with all of this spinning round and round in my coconut, I came home and found a little boy in a shirt that was printed with an image close to the one at the head of this piece.  It's then that the following happened:
Dear English, thanks for the pretty color scheme for our own flag.
                             Thanks for letting us borrow and remake your language.
                             Thanks for being more interested in Canada than in US.
                             Thanks for disliking the French more than US.
                             Thanks for exiling the best cooks to Louisiana.
                             Thanks for wearing those nice, bright red unis to Concord.
I have told you once before that I worked for a British Company for a couple years.  Some of them have a sense of humor about "losing" the "States" and some do not.  No matter who they are, they do enjoy the days off.  They also like to claim Thanksgiving as their gift to us.  That, dear friends is a story for a different blog and a different time.  Be that as it may, I do hope you are having a blessed Thanksgiving episode this year.