"Live Free or Die," and Other Mysteries from an Unknown Land

Yesterday, on the way home from church, we stopped at the New Hampshire Welcome Center.  For us, it should be called The New Hampshire Relief Center, for its main function in our lives is to accommodate people who urgently need access to private plumbing on the way home.  It almost seems like it was set up as an emergency stop for children who discover that they need to get to the bathroom more-or-less immediately after leaving church (church is very close to the state line). 

We pulled into the parking lot, and I sort-of kept an eye on Daniel as he made his way to the men's room.  On the way back, he apparently had noticed someone with a Land's End bumpersticker - or something - because he asked me what Land's End was.   I told him it was a company.  He thought the name was weird.  I explained that the company was named after a town in England.  Then Daniel had another question-with-observation:

"Why do people have sort-of-inappropriate things on their cars that say, 'Live free or die'?"  Is that from Land's End.

I didn't know where to begin, to explain to him that "Live Free or Die" is the noble motto of our beautiful state, and that it's on every New Hampshire license plate, including our own.

I didn't think New Hampshire Unawareness Day could get any better observed than that, but Madeleine stepped up to the challenge.  She asked me where we were - what kind of place. I explained that the New Hampshire Welcome Center exists to welcome people to New Hampshire, and to provide people with information about all the wonderful things that they can do, see, visit, buy, in the Granite State, and that it was even staffed with people who could answer visitor's questions, although our use of the "facility" was far more pragmatic than that.

Then Madeleine helped me realize that Daniel isn't so far behind the learning curve, after all:  "Do we live in New Hampshire?"

(September 14, 2014)