Ah, spring. The grass is green, the daffodils are blooming and the sun may or may not be shining. The birds are singing, and the architecture students are beginning to poke their heads out of Giles. Since about the beginning of March, life has been gradually returning to campus.
And then spring break came, and all the life ran off to the Gulf Coast to sit on the beach and drink heavily.
Yes, this will probably come as a huge shock to you, but a couple of weeks ago marked spring break, another very important feature of the season. After all, what would spring be without a week off to celebrate the fact that it’s spring?
I don’t know about you, but my break was spent mostly in Orlando (specifically, the Orlando in Florida). And my visit to Orlando brought to light an interesting trend that I can’t totally explain: Canadians.
Orlando was absolutely swarming with them. More accurately, it was swarming with people from Ontario. Even more accurately, it was swarming with license plates from Ontario.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it was probably warmer in Florida than in Ontario that week. That may explain some of the traffic. But that doesn’t explain why there were more cars from Ontario than from the entire Northeastern United States combined. Or why I couldn’t find a single car from a province bordering Ontario.
Now, everyone already knows Canada is secretly trying to overthrow the United States. That’s why they’ve been sending us people like Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne and Justin Bieber. But it’s starting to look like they’re stepping up their plans from assaulting us musically to a full-scale invasion.
In order to shine some light on this inexplicable influx of Canadians, I interviewed a student from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. I’m going to call him Patrick for the purposes of this article. (And also because that’s his name.)
Me: So Patrick, have you noticed the unusually high numbers of people from Ontario driving around Orlando over the past few days?
Patrick: No.
Me: .
Patrick: .
Me: Seriously?
Patrick: Seriously. I haven’t really been paying attention.
Me: Work with me here. Surely you’ve seen at least one.
Patrick: I overheard someone talking about hockey yesterday. Maybe he was from Ontario?
Maybe he was from Ontario indeed. If that doesn’t send chills down your spine, I don’t know what will.
So what does this mean for America? Depending on your perspective, it could be either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to us. (Or, y’know, somewhere in between.)
On the one hand, the Canadian dollar is worth almost three cents more than the American dollar. So if we start using those, we’ll all be totally rich. (Or at least, everyone who’s currently only 97 percent rich will be totally rich.) That is how the economy works, right?
On the other hand, if Canada takes over our country, we’d have to add 10 yards to all of our football fields, which sounds like a huge hassle. Not to mention, football would suddenly become much less interesting.
There may also be other arguments for or against Canada taking over the United States, but I can’t think of any. So based on that, I’m going to have to side against our assailants on this one. (Don’t take it personally, Canada.)
As a result, I have done some extensive research on how to stop the invasion (read: Googled “Canadian repellent”), but it’s turned up nothing useful. (Unless you happen to have a problem with Canadian geese.)
So since that didn’t work, we’ll have to improvise. I think our best move is to wait until the end of spring, when it gets too hot for the average Canadian to remain in Florida. My guess is that they’ll call off the invasion then.
If that doesn’t work, then I’m out of ideas, other than surrendering our country. Maybe having new Canadian overlords won’t be so bad. I hear they have a good health care system.
McNeill Williford is a senior majoring in industrial engineering. He can be contacted at [email protected].