Dumpster Ball

This post is called Dumpster Ball, because my brothers taught me a game this weekend called Dumpster Ball. Sound hickish, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is. It's exactly like golf, except the holes are dumpsters (don't aim in the dumpsters, you just have to hit them--I know, I had that problem, too), and there are no clubs, because, really, do you know how hard it is to hit that little ball with that little club head? It's pretty darn hard. Dumpster Ball is much easier than golf, and therefore more enjoyable. So they taught me, and I played it, because I'm a hick

But, despite the fact that I play dumpster ball, I generally consider myself a fairly open minded person. I try to treat most people the same, and because of this, I find I have a pretty diverse group of friends and acquaintances (thought not all of them know that I play dumpster ball). That seems to be the way I like it.

The more and more I meet people from different cultures and areas, the more I learn about the world. I really love that, and I don't understand why everyone wouldn't want to know as much as possible from actual people who've actually lived elsewhere. So every time I get a 'you're really open-minded!' comment, I feel a little uncomfortable, because I don't think I'm that much different from most people. I think most Americans get a bad wrap.

We teach hundreds of foreign languages in school including Spanish, Chinese, Farsi, Tagalog--pretty much anything you can think of you could be taught here in the US. Granted we don't have a vast amount of fluent bi- or triligual speakers, but we don't have a great use for them! Europeans get flustered with Americans when they don't speak French, Italian, and German, but we don't live near countries that speak these languages. If I lived in Spain, I could go to France on the weekends and become fluent in French, but alas. When I lived in Germany for a summer internship I asked if, as in many US schools, they taught Chinese. They kind of laughed at me, "but what would we need Chinese for?" Um, if you ever needed to do a business deal in China? If you decided to take an internship there for a summer in college?

We also get a bad wrap for not knowing simple things about other countries. We all remember the woman on 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?' who did not know which country was the capital of Budapest. Millions (probably) of angry Europeans and who knows who else complained about how stupid Americans are. She also made a comment about thinking Europe was a country. We'll just ignore that for a moment, because many people were offended simply because she didn't know the country Budapest belonged to. So first of all, let's remember that the 5th grader is an American, and he got it right. From there we'll go to...dude, I don't even know that. But I also don't know the capital of Montana or Kentucky. I showed this to my Venezuelan labmate, and he laughed very hard. I asked "Do you know what country Budapest is the capital of?" He said, "Uh, no." Ah, I don't feel so bad

(but the "I thought Europe *was* a country" . . . yeah, we can give her the hick of the year award for that)

I could go on . . . about how my South American labmates (who are, in more ways then one can count, pretty terrifically awesome, but one has gone back home--sadness) are terrified of Muslims and pretty much Arabs in general. (But, I've recently learned, only in the US. If the Muslims are living in Canada, they're cool . . . ) I'm thinking that if an Isalmic extremist had a choice to explode me or the both of them, s/he would probably definitely go for me, and yet I am unafraid! How does that work?

I could also tell you about my friend Alisha's cabbie in Leeds, England, who when she talked with him about Boston responded with, " yah, but there's too many patties there, aren't there?" OK, cabbie man, I thought people stopped using the term 'patties' about a hundred years ago.

Turns out, it's stressful to be an American. The whole world has an opinion one way or another about our country and how it's being run and what we're doing wrong and who we're discriminating against and who we don't understand because we are so 'closed minded,' and we can't even rebut these ideas, because 84% of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going. That's a large percentage! Sounds like we are very disappointed in ourselves. Well, geez, friends. It looks to me like everyone has problems. I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about ridding the world of discrimination and misunderstandings, or that Americans don't have reasons to be dissatisfied with other aspects of the country. I'm just saying that there's a bigger picture here, and compared to everyone else, we're doing alright . . . or at least not as bad as some people might say . . .