When you run, you get to know the quirks and features of all the houses on your routes. Occasionally, you get curious to match a face with a home, and even more rarely, you run by when one of the owners is on the porch or in the yard. (For the record, the guy whose pickup truck has the Confederate flag painted on his tailgate looks exactly like I expected him to.)

Yesterday, I ran by a particular house and saw the door open. “Ooh, I’ve been wondering who lives there,” I thought, “because —” Then I couldn’t remember what was so interesting about that house. Something political?

Then I spotted it: a bumper sticker that read, “This is America: Speak English.”

What is it with Americans and their foreign language phobia? Were we all so traumatized by our high school language requirement? I myself suffered for three years at the hands of Frau “Eva” Braun, but I can hear German spoken on the street without turning into a raving lunatic.

Alas, it happened so quickly that I totally lost the opportunity to greet my neighbor with a friendly “Salem w’aleikum!”

Next time.