One Nation - Under ignorance

Each year, I spend Memorial Day Weekend in the most patriotic place in the country (No, not Vegas). I spend it at our nation's capital: Washington DC.

Looking back through my old blogs, I realize that I haven't really written about this before. So before I get to the point of this blog, let me explain the weekend.

Every year, thousands upon thousands of bikers head to DC for Rolling Thunder. This is a 3-day event that serves to somehow pay homage to those who fought (and those who died) in the Vietnam War. On Friday night, there is a candle lighting ceremony at the Vietnam Wall. Then on sunday, there is a parade that runs through the city (all bikers, no floats or anything).

I won't go into details on my experience at these events, but I will say one thing. With so many bikers, and biker gangs, congregating in one place you'd think that there would be tension and violence. But, in truth, I've never been to a happier (and safer) event. Everyone is very nice to each other. It's pretty cool.

But anyway, let's get back on track.

After we're tired of doing motorcycle-related things, we catch some of the sights in the city. This year, we spent most of that time at the Lincoln Memorial.

You might be wondering, "How could someone spend more than a few minutes at the Lincoln Memorial?" Yeah I know. It's just one building, and there's not a lot in it. But this gets me to the point of my blog.

As we walked up to the Memorial, someone pointed out the names of states listed across the top. Then, underneath each state were some Roman Numerals. We started wondering why the states were in such an odd order, and what the roman numerals meant. After some pondering, we figured that the numerals were dates. And while I only know what I, V, and X mean in Roman Numerals, I could figure the rest out knowing that it was a date.

So we had States and Dates. But still no reason. In the end, it took us a while to figure that the states were listed in order of when they either signed the constitution, or joined the union, or something else.

And in fact, those first 2 things might be the same. Joining the union may mean that you signed the constitution.

My point is that we didn't know. We were a group of 5 people of varying intellects and none of us knew.

I can spout off a wealth of useless knowledge about actors and movies. I can even spout off a much smaller wealth of useful knowledge about computers. But I couldn't have told you something basic about US History.

It was a sad day for our forefathers...