Onward Hoe!

Diana's downstairs counting the states with her citizenship students, and it reminds me of the time when, in my license plate obsession, I tried to figure out which states I hadn't yet seen in Raleigh. I couldn't figure it out, and even more confusing was the fact that I had numbered a piece of paper to 50, filled in the states whose plates I'd seen, and realized all but one of the ones I was missing. In a panic, I tried to count them all on a map, but those New England ones are just so tiny and irregularly shaped that I kept missing one somewhere. I was really freaked out and conspiracy-theoristic for about five minutes (There are only 49! I can't believe there are only 49, and that we've been lied to! I can't believe we bought it! We all should have counted! You can't just round off the number of states! This is terrible!!) until I realized that the one I was missing--the plate I hadn't seen and couldn't think of--was North Carolina.

In a period of about four months, I saw 49 states' license plates in Raleigh. A year after I began noticing, I still haven't seen Montana. Where are you, Montanans? I invite you to drive to Raleigh. It's quite nice. And while you're here, drive up and down Duraleigh Rd. between the hours of 4 and 8, and I'm bound to see you.