When traveling abroad I often encountered large groups of friendly new faces willing to share a pint, but the clock was counting down to insult and injury. No more than 20 minutes into our conversation I would be confronted with questions like, “So, you’re American… do you know where France is? Wait… how about Texas? Or Washington DC?” It was ignorant of the club trolling crowds to assume that all Americans are geographically disabled, but they were not far from wrong. For a while I was able to answer their common knowledge questions, it was only because of their sarcastic simplicity.

Point to any country on the globe and your average European dishwasher can tell you the name of its capital city. Do I think this is overkill? Yes. Does everyone need to have that much information packed between his or her ears in the Google age? No. But there should be a happy medium.

I believe that the average high school senior should be able to name the countries of the world and all US states. Further it would not be too much to ask an 18 year old to recognize, if not memorize, this nations state capitals and most of the major cities of the world. But this is a pipe dream. For now let’s just focus on this blog’s limited readership. I am going to teach myself what public school and private college failed to impart. If you care to join me I suggest that you take your first baby step towards a patina of culture and buy a world map shower curtain. Sure you could go on the web and check out world maps, but it is the daily ritual of toilet training that works. Seriously, I do not work for the shower curtain lobby. I just want you to join me in not sounding stupid in front of foreigners and this is truly the least expensive and most efficient way to do it. Just make sure that you don’t find a bargain basement special on eBay that was made in ’81 and still has the Soviet flag draped over what are now a dozen “stans”.