We have this practical joke we do on people we meet.  I should probably be less proud of it than I am. But with the understanding that you’ll probably never see most of the people you encounter on the road comes the desire to take advantage of it, just by messing with them a little bit.

It generally goes like this: When people ask where we’re going, one of us well say, well, we were looking forward to going through Texas, but we don’t have our passports, so now we probably can’t. The other person will express confusion, and we’ll say, wait, haven’t you heard? Texas seceded earlier today. Then, since I’m the sole politics junkie on the bus, I’ll usually provide a bunch of convincing corroborating details, like what John Cornyn had to say about it and the fact that Rick Perry’s the new president of the Republic of Texas.

It’s interesting seeing how people react. The weird thing is that most of them buy it. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly good liar, but we’ve gotten this one prank down to a science. Very few people feel terribly strongly about the secession, since it often doesn’t affect their lives that directly. When we were in Austin, Texas, we switched it up from Texas to Vermont, and the people who we told it to toasted the new Republic of Vermont.

Sometimes we let people in on the joke on our way out, in which case they’re invariably amused. But sometimes we don’t. I’m pretty sure there are at least a couple people who, two weeks after we bid farewell, still believe that America is comprised of 49 states. One person who we told it to ran inside his house to check Google News, and when we realized that he was onto us, we convinced him to play along to fool the rest of his friends. I’m not sure what it says about people that he was so willing to sustain the joke — or, for that matter, that other people that they keep believing it so willingly. It’s probably best not to worry about it; it’s all in good fun.