We need a setting here: visualize yourself sitting with a few friends around a campfire. In, um, southwestern Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s dark and there’s a billion stars above us. It’s my turn to tell a story…

“So, this one day at work in the Isle of Man, I leave the office at 11:15 AM, and walk the 200 yards to my car. At 11:50 AM, I walk into the Subway in the center of Douglas and pick up the sandwiches for lunch at the office. I’m back at the office less than an hour after I walked out.”

A ten-year-old raises his hand: “Wait – what happened between 11:15 and 11:50?”

“I registered my car.”

<FX> The kids fall all over themselves laughing.

“C’mon Uncle Lee! We’re ten years old – we don’t fall for that sort of Santa Claus story any more.” The parents shake their heads that I’m putting such silly ideas into the young uns’ heads.

“No seriously,” I say, “It’s true! I’m not making this up!” [1]

I’ll swear it on a stack of bibles: I first drove to my insurance office, where an official stamped copy of my confirmation of insurance was waiting. Then I went to the main downtown Post Office. If you’re not from the UK, you may not realize that the Post Office is a governmental hub in this culture. People (admittedly mostly older ones) do their savings there, pay their utility bills, do money exchange for travel, get fishing licenses, and indeed, register their cars. I find it fascinating that person N stepping up to the counter may want to send a package to France, person N+1 may want to register his motorcycle. The clerks take it all in complete stride.

Anyway, I stand in the queue for 5-10 minutes until the (pleasant female) digitized voice invites me to register 2. I hand the guy my (one-page) registration form, insurance proof, and prior registration from when I bought the car (in the UK). “You’ll need the tax form too,” he says. He steps away from his desk and reappears with that form – also one page. I fill it out; he sits as if he hasn’t a care in the world. He stamps a couple of things, tells me it’ll be £125 all told. I pull out my debit card, he slides the little machine over, and I do the chip-and-PIN dance.

“In the States, people wait for hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles to do this,” I say. He looks at me, trying to imagine such a thing. “Hours?” “Oh yeah, literally hours of waiting in line.” He shakes his head, wondering how the Yanks ever made it as a nation, no doubt.

I get back to the office with the sandwiches. Tell the American contingent my car registration story. They look at me, then quietly go back to their desks with their foot-long chicken tikka on wheat. It’s sad, they think, that good old Lee is losing his mind at such a relatively young age.

[1] With apologies to Dave Barry