Dropping the Kids Off at the Pool, and That is Not a Euphamism For Anything
Monday, June 14, 2010
Ah, summer vacation is almost here. I have been all aflutter trying to plan daycare as needed and activities that keep the summer from becoming a three month Spongebob marathon. My husband and I are dropping the kids off in Wisconsin with my parents and then we are going to spend eight days in New England.
Funny story, or maybe sad depending on how you look at it.... Gene and I decided on Boston as our point of entry into the Northeast. Neither of us had been further than New York and the two hour, reasonably priced flight from Milwaukee clinched it. In spite of my tremendous failings in geography, I knew that from Boston, we might be able to visit several surrounding states. I kept typing Boston and Maine and Rhode Island into Google, hoping to get some ideas of proximity so that we could see as much as possible without spending too much time getting there rather than being there. So New England kept coming up and I thought, yes, we should go there too.
You are not reading this wrong, I thought New England was it's own local, separate from Boston and Maine and Rhode Island. I didn't think it was a state exactly, perhaps a city in one of the states or something vaguely ambiguous like how Washington DC is neither part of Maryland or Virginia. Of course I am the same girl who sophomore year of highschool raised her hand to correct the teacher that Washington DC was in fact the capital city of Washington the state. Thankfully I mentally put together that they were on separate ends of the country before I was called upon.
The best part is that when I asked my husband what and where New England was, certain that I had to be the only one lacking some fundamental US geography knowledge, he had a correct notion of the where but thought it was a state. I felt vindicated because my husband is a very smart man with a Master's degree. He however, was not all together happy with me outing his lack of knowledge on all thing Nor'easterly, and used his birth in California as well as the fact that his master's is not in geography as an explanation for said lack of knowledge. I also blame my misinformation on the New England Patriots. I think that a region getting to put their name on a football team that is based in Massachusetts is unnecessarily confusing for map moron's like myself.
Anyhow, I would like to once again thank Wikipedia for correcting the severe gaps in my public school education.*
*Don't email me angry teachers, I am using public school as the scapegoat for my own academic failings. Truthfully, I was probably outside around back smoking cigarettes during this particular lesson.
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That is AMAZING.
People from California come here and get all bojangled and disoriented about directions. They think everything is east of them. Like, which way is Iowa? They don't know. Arkansas? They don't know. It's great. Makes me feel entitled.
I'm pretty bad about geography and it sucks because people over here are constantly asking me stupid questions like where Maryland is and shit and I'm like, Yo, I'm from Arizona. I know where San Diego and Las Vegas are and that's about it. I think we ranked like 49 in quality of public education, so that pretty much excuses me. I figured out the New England thing though when I was a freshman in college and had a bunch of roomates from back East.
By the way, gutted you aren't coming to Spain. I hope you've just put that one off until next year. Dying to have a bottle of vino with you and show you around Seville.
Being from Californai, but now living in the Deep South, I know both the west and east coast pretty darn well. It's all those middle states I get confused about.
A professor I had in college once asked if any of the student were from the Midwest. I raised my had, stated I was from Sacramento, and then blushed from the ensuing laughter.
WTH? It was in the middle of the West Coast!
And apparently I don't know how to spell "California" or "hand", much less the plural form of "student". Nice. And I have a private school education AND a Master's Degree.
I was visiting a friend in San Diego once. We went to a party and one of the locals, upon hearing that I lived in Arkansas, asked me which ocean that was on. On the other hand, my own sister thought the Wimbledon final was always on the Fourth of July because it's a holiday.