Sitting at the red light, watching the lines of cars, trucks and other assorted vehicles whiz past, headed in directions perpendicular to mine, two concepts ring true.

First: A very popular urban myth probably rests on a very solid combination of math and lived experience.

Second: America really is a great place.

Allow me to explain.

As we know, the digital information revolution, as it has been styled, has allowed for the implosion of a great many longstanding truisms.

For instance, nearly all of us grew up facing the dreaded prospect of having to choose between eating and swimming. Why? Because we were told: “You must wait at least 30 minutes to swim after eating or you will suffer cramps.”

Others of us believed that if we ever should get the chance to rocket into orbit, we would be treated to the sight of the Great Wall of China from space.

And others were told that if we should hop in a time machine and travel 1,000 years into the future, we may find still-edible Hostess Twinkies, provided they remained wrapped in their original packaging, of course.

As it turns out, none of those are true.

We can feel safe to scarf down a burger, fries and a Coke at our local community pools and hop back into the water, without any deleterious physical effects — other than those normally associated with eating fast food meals.

While our illuminated cities will splay out before you in splendor when your orbit takes you around to the side of the planet opposite the sun, no individual manmade structures are visible from the International Space Station.

And, seemingly counterintuitively, the shelf life of a Twinkie is only 25 days.

The internet, of course, has proven adept at also spreading false information.

One of my favorites enduring digital truisms? That the average American will spend 6 months of their lives sitting at red lights.

Searches failed to reveal where exactly this number came from. The best analysis I could find seemed to point the origin to someone on Reddit who simply did math, calculating how often we hit red lights in a typical day, multiplying that by how long the typical red light takes to change to green, and then extrapolating that number over a lifetime of driving.

By all accounts, that number is almost certainly exaggerated. Some online estimates place the number closer to two months, for instance.

The duration also may be likely on the decline, thanks to new innovations, like the often (and wrongly, if you ask me) disparaged roundabout intersections.

If you disagree, that’s fair, but if you learn to yield, and exit at the correct point, you can kiss red light wait times goodbye. What’s not to like?

And, of course, how much time we actually wait at intersections will often also be a function of the routes we choose.

We know, for instance, that roads carrying heavier traffic will also include traffic signals that (when properly tuned) are timed to allow the most traffic to flow through intersections.

Conversely, the signals controlling the less busy sides of the perpendicular crossroads have also been programmed to make us wait longer at those red lights, while hoping we can zip through on a much shorter green — or that anxiety-inducing yellow-turning-red, as the case may be.

No matter the actual number of weeks spent waiting for lights to change and traffic to clear, the minutes and seconds only compound because we, as Americans, rely on one fundamental assumption: We will ultimately have the chance to proceed through the intersection and on to our destination.

Indeed, as anyone who has ever driven in many foreign countries quickly learns, this baseline concept is what keeps America’s roadways from devolving into a demolition derby-like chaos akin to multiball mode on a pinball table, while persuading America’s drivers to (mostly) stay in their lanes.

While I sat at the light, patiently waiting for green, more or less, it occurred to me that this concept has only worked on the roadways because it is also woven into the very fabric of the system that we call America.

While we love and cherish democracy, there is also another concept that makes America great: The commitment to protecting the ability of people to desire to travel different roads and perhaps arrive at a destination different from the majority.

Indeed, America is rarely better than when it stands up for the little guy and defends the rights of those who may choose to swim upstream, as it were.

Of course, in a democratic system, those moving against the majority may not often get their way.

But if they believe that the rules of the road and the rules’ enforcers will respect their ability to also use the metaphorical roads, and that the red light that now prevents them from getting where they want to go will eventually turn green, even if briefly, then nearly all will choose to participate and play along.

But if majorities use their democratic power to further shorten the signals or worse, prevent the red lights from ever changing to green, our history is replete with examples of those permanently stopped at red lights choosing instead to pinball their way across traffic, crashing the system in real-world, high-stakes game of Frogger.

I didn’t actually calculate how long I was forced to sit at that light waiting for green, contemplating.

But as my vehicle eventually moved through the intersection under the green luminescence, as well as the impatient glares of those forced to stop to let me through, I couldn’t help but raise the drink in my cupholder in a salute to the land of the free, home of the brave, and the world’s greatest progenitor of enduring constitutional law.

And that is no internet myth.

Happy 250th birthday, America. Here’s to 250 more.