Not to horn in on Miss Teenage South Carolina’s fifteen minutes of shame, but I have a confession to make. First of all, I grew up seeing a world map that looked roughly like this:
Yes, there it is, front and center, the USA, with Canada a huge land mass above us, Greenland bigger than all of South America, and Australia tucked comfortingly over there to the left with its cute kangaroos and koala bears and such. To the right, across the Atlantic, were England and a bunch of other places.
Then, after I’d been thirty-five at least a couple of times…
I worked for a nameless company whose corporate offices were in one of those countries somewhere over there near England. And I walked into the break room my first day and saw something that looked roughly like this on the wall:
Holy shit, we’re not the center of the world?!?!? Who shrunk Greenland? Who moved Australia? What the hell?!?
Yes, I had never seen a flat world map on which the USA was not front and center until I was already old enough to be a grandmother to Tim’s unborn children.
(But I love globes, so I already knew Greenland wasn’t REALLY bigger than all of South America.)
Even though it wasn’t where you thought it was…or should be…you could still find it. Granted, our Southern teen beauty queen never mentions whether or not she can locate the US on a world map. She very well could. She just wouldn’t be able to articulate where it is.
One of my favorite episodes of The West Wing is when the activist cartographers come see C.J. Cregg and tell her the map–and the globe–are racist; and what we generally see as the world is actually upside down, because south is REALLY north…etc…
You know what’s even scarier? The number of Americans who can’t point out all 50 states on a map of the U.S. Sure, everyone knows where California, Texas, and Florida are. But Rhode Island? Missouri? West Virginia? No clue.
Missouri is a state? (Kidding, but someone HAD to say it….)
May the ghost of Harry S haunt you forever!
Better a Democrat in my dreams than the Republicans who haunt my waking state….
At least the buck stops there…
I confess I am one of those people … but it’s not because I’m dumb, it’s just that there are a lot of states out west and in the middle that I just don’t care about… I know that Wyoming is, I just don’t care WHERE it is… If you’ve ever been there, you’d know why. ( and yes I have been there …)
No! No! You didn’t dis my Wyoming, did you?! You must just have not been in the right part. Just for that, you ARE getting the cow poop scented soy tart! (Or is it a tart? Maybe it’s just cow poop.)
It’s in the forties at Old Faithful this morning. Brrrrr.
I’ve been to Cactus Flats WY … color me not impressed. I’m sorry … but it was one big EWWW… Of course, I could replace Wyoming with Nebraska and feel the same way … would that help?
Cactus flats doesn’t ring any bells, but I’m guessing it must be in the eastern part of the state. Yeah, that is pretty boring and interchangeable with Nebraska. Now, North Dakota is another EWWW in it’s own way.
Oh we were so getting ready to go downtown. I was going to defend North Dakota in a fury of flying fists… then I remembered, “No, you love SOUTH Dakota…”
I’m completely with you on the North Dakota thing. Did you hear for awhile they were considering a name change to Dakota … because the North part made them sound bad? I think Dakota sounds like a soap opera bad boy/girl …
Do you by chance remember Dakota cigarette ads from the late 1980s, early 1990s? Those guys were hot. They inspired a few characters of mine way back when.
Lips that love liquor and cigarettes will never touch mine.
So now you know why I’m all alone.
I don’t remember those boys.
Found one
Re: Found one
WAIT! I answered from my mail, I didn’t see the picture … forget that whole lips thing… those lips can touch me. YOW!
Re: Found one
At last, we agree on something! I’m ecstatic!
Yeah, the Black Hills are great.
The husband is from North Dakota. I’ve been to his home town twice in all the years we’ve been married. Only the main street is (or maybe was, but I can’t imagine it’s changed) paved, all the others are gravel.
I don’t think a name change would help make the state any more attractive to me.
Okay, i took the state quizz … I actually DO know where Wyoming is. I get Nebraska and Kansas mixed up — and I get Vermont and New Hampshire confused. So WY is in the clear. Apparently I AM a Cactus Flats kinda gal!
I’ll bet you more third graders can recognize the shape of the state of Missouri than the state of New York.
SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW YOUR STATES
Qant to try the IDENTIFY THE STATES TEST?
Test Your STATES IQ.
Being from Missouri, I was able to identify all 48 of the given states. Yes, they left off Hawaii and Alaska because they weren’t contiguous
Probably, especially the ones in New Jersey.
Last year we bought a giant wall map of the world to hang in the boys room, because we realized that our only globe is an antique and our only world atlas if from 1989. We didn’t want them to be the dumb ones in school.
All of my maps and atlases are pretty out of date. However, I’ve deliberately hung on to the first city maps I used in Manhattan because those maps changed after 2001.
When my kids were small/preschool, I thumb tacked a large map in the bathroom right next to the toliet. I figured if they were a captive audiance I might as well make the most of it.
I would switch it up every few months. A world map for a while, then one of just the states.
My husband thought I was crazy. I never claimed to be all the normal, but at least I gave them a chance to learn something new at least once a day.
I think I saw a world map shower curtain when I was googling maps. That might have helped me as a kid. I loved my globe. I keep meaning to buy a good globe, but never have.
Back in the 80’s I visited the U.S.S.R. (as they called it!)
and bought a map in a bookstore in Leningrad (as it was
called!). The Soviet Union was right in the middle and
VERY red! The U.S. was kind of stuck off to the side
and looked decidedly smaller than usual.
We had that map on the wall for years and it was a great
conversation piece.
It’s funny how something like that just doesn’t occur to you, isn’t it? That’s one reason I like to read the news from other countries now and then. It’s an entirely different perspective.
Oh and on the first map, is it me or does Australia look like a little pig? Is this to make us hate Aussies? Or endear them –ala Charlotte’s Web… OH WOW LOOK AT THEN NOW!!!
One last thing Beckster … because I tried to fight it and just couldn’t do it ..
So Becky, are you horny?
My friend from the UK admits that when she was in school, the map of England and the the map of the US and Canada were on facing pages, so she figured they were about the same size. She planned to fly into San Francisco airport and take a cab from there to Los Angeles to visit me. So we’re not the only ones….
So we’re not the only ones….
That makes me feel better. =)
Globes
I love globes (and maps) too – and yet I’m still lost most of the time. (There’s got to be a Freudian connection there.) I spend at least an hour of every flight staring at the maps in the back of the airline magazine. I grew up with the flat map on the school wall too. I like the flat map better, if only for sentimental reasons (and not necessarily ugly American ones). And I thought it would be much more interesting to see how many of the contestants could have picked out the U.S. on a map!
Shawn Lea
http://everythingandnothing.typepad.com
Re: Globes
Like you, I also love globes and maps, yet geography questions are impossible for me to answer in Trivial Pursuit. It’s quite embarrassing.