(I live in the state of Wisconsin and I have Internet friends all over, including one in North Carolina. The following is a conversation I once had with her.)
Friend: “Come give me a hug!”
Me: “Sure! I’ll be there in however long it takes me to get from Wisconsin to North Carolina.”
Friend: “Wisconsin?”
Me: “The state? Wisconsin?”
Friend: “Wisconsin is a state?”
(We get other Internet friends involved, most of them yelling at her that yes, Wisconsin is a state. I start trying to describe where it’s located to maybe get her to realize.)
Me: “Have you ever heard of the city Chicago?”
Friend: “Chicago? Yeah, isn’t it over by Idaho?”
Me: *deep sigh*
(I am working as a burger flipper and petrol pump assistant in a tiny tourist town on the Great Ocean Road when a terribly rude American tourist asks me the following.)
Tourist: “Excuse me, ma’am. Could you tell me what is the best time to catch a flight to Hobart?”
(Hobart is the capital city in Tasmania, the island State at the bottom of Australia.)
Me: “Well, that depends; when do you need to arrive?”
Tourist: *suddenly and unexpectedly yelling* “Don’t play games with me, young lady. I’m not a stupid tourist, you know!”
Me: “…?”
Tourist: “I know that Tasmania rotates, so it must be cheaper to fly at certain times of day when Hobart is closer to the mainland.”
Me: “…?!”
Tourist: “Well? I haven’t got all day.”
Me: *speechless*
Related:
No Vocation For Location, Part 22
No Vocation For Location, Part 21
No Vocation For Location, Part 20
This happened to my friend. She is white, but she was born and raised in Haiti. As a result, she grew up mostly seeing black people and her parents were the only white people she knew. When she was about three, her parents took her on a trip to the States to visit family.
Seeing a lot of white people freaked out the three-year-old girl, and she clung to her mother. One day, while they were at the grocery store, my friend saw a black cashier. She ran to the cashier and hugged her. The cashier was confused, especially after my friend started to speak Haitian Creole to her. Her mom had to explain that she grew up in Haiti and wasn’t used to people in the States yet.
When they got back to the house, my friend’s mom explained that there are a lot of white people in the States but she doesn’t have to be scared of them, and not all black people speak Haitian Creole.
(I’m a Mexican tourist in London. I’m in a store, talking to myself in Spanish, when a store clerk hears me.)
Clerk: “Great… another [slur].”
(This particular slur is a derisive term for Mexican immigrants into the USA that assumes that they arrived illegally to the States by swimming across the Grande River.)
Me: “I… What?!”
Clerk: “I used to live in Texas, and we got a lot of you [slur]s there. I didn’t think there were also [slur]s in England. Just because you can swim doesn’t mean we have to take you in!”
Me: “Well… there are, unfortunately, some immigrants who try to get into the US by swimming across the Grande River. But the ‘border’ between Mexico and the UK is the freaking Atlantic Ocean. I can’t even begin to imagine why you’d think I swam across an entire ocean to get here.”
(The clerk just stood there, confused.)
(This happens in late August in China. I’ve noticed a girl from Peru is wearing winter clothes in the scorching heat of northern China’s summer.)
Me: “[Girl]? Sorry to ask, but why are you always wearing such thick clothes? It’s almost 40°C every day, even at night.”
Girl: “I know… but this is all I have. My teachers said winter is really cold here, so I brought the warmest winter clothes I could find in Peru. If winter is 40°C, I don’t even want to imagine how summer will be.”
Me: “I also heard that winter is really cold here, but autumn hasn’t even begun yet, let alone winter.”
Girl: “Don’t be silly. Winter begins in late June and…”
Me: *interrupting her* “Yes, in the southern hemisphere. China is in the northern hemisphere, and winter begins in December.”
Girl: “Wait… What?”
Me: “You said you went to Europe last December. Didn’t you notice it was cold instead of warm? Wasn’t it snowing?”
Girl: “Yeah… but I thought the weather is like that in Europe. Cold all year round.”
(A girl in her 20s who has been to different countries around Europe and North and South America didn’t know and hadn’t noticed that seasons are different in the southern and northern hemispheres. Unfortunately for her, all she had brought to China were winter clothes, and she had planned to ask home for money in December to buy summer clothes. Her first two weeks in China were very miserable for her.)
