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View My Stats, bitch.
Of course, this was slightly prior to one of the more defining moments of elementary school -- well, it was more like a series of moments. It was where a teacher finally realized that I wasn't actually retarded, I was just blind and couldn't see a damn thing and that might be why I couldn't fucking read. This was well after I'd been punished numerous times for not writing down the homework from the blackboard and crap like that. Of course, my parents had never noticed that I couldn't see, and I didn't know that I couldn't see because I thought everyone saw the world as big fuzzy blobs of color that sometimes fell from the sky and whacked you on the head. Mostly during gym class, which was also a nightmare.
But, I digress. What I really meant to say is that the pimp was, as usual, correct. Stonehenge is a bit (ahem) anticlimactic. It was more like seeing the replica in Spinal Tap than I expected it to be. My son kept saying, "You have to pay to see a pile of rocks?" Just as we were arriving, Greg called and said, "You have to pay to see a pile of rocks?" hmph. Anyhoo, it is as cold as a motherfucker out on that plain. You can't get very close to the henge because people keep trying to chip bits off as souvenirs. There's a gift shop and a food stand. The gift shop sells little replicas of the circle, but the food stand doesn't sell anything that looks like Stonehenge at all. Greg wanted a t-shirt that says "I got Stoned at the henge," but unfortunately, he doesn't work for the British Heritage Society in the t-shirt slogan department, so they didn't have any such thing. All I wanted was to be warm again. So, all in all, about 1/2 hour at the attraction, about 2 hours there and 2 hours back... I started wondering what it would be like if Stonehenge were in, say, Texas instead of southern England. I imagine there would be a nice cocktail bar right next to the circle. It would have a big roaring fireplace, and serve things like hot buttered rum and Keoke coffee. You could see the circle from the big window, but you didn't have to freeze your ass off to do it. On the other side would be a big skateboarding ramp that you dropped into from a lintel. To keep the kids out of your hair while you enjoyed your beverage. You could get some chicken wings standing up in a circle around a little altar stone tub of blue cheese dressing, with carrot sticks as lintels. On Saturdays, there would be a show wherein the re-enactment (slightly fictionalized) of a human sacrifice at the center of the circle would take place. Druids could be pillaged. I miss home.