Learning #1: Think outside the map

The name of this blog has nothing to do with Eskimos, really. For that matter, saying that it has to do with Alaska is a bit of a stretch. It has about as much to do with Alaska as it does with Canada and Florida...

This blog will be organized by Learnings, in no particular order. Because being a woefully clueless person stumbling through life means that I learn things. A lot. Things you think I'd know (like "unplug that toaster before you stick a fork in it, for Chrissakes"), but things I just don't. Or just forgot. Or just decide I don't want to know, I suppose.

And that is why, when deciding what to call my blog, which will probably be a place for me to tell the various stories that lead friends to use me as the poster child of the difference between "book smarts" and "street smarts," I remembered a story.

This story may or may not illustrate the difference between book smarts and street smarts, though, technically. But it's close enough.

Anyway, as you'll see by the map above and the associated Google images link that takes you to a lot of nice pictures of the United States, Alaska sits in a nice little box there off the coasts of California and Texas. In other maps it's off to the left of California, next to Hawaii. And when I was a kid, all the maps I ever got had it over in the lower right-hand corner of the map. Hawaii: lower left corner. Alaska: lower right corner.

And this is why I thought Alaska was a floating island somewhere off the coast of Florida until I was 20 years old.

Now, for those people who wonder what you learn in college, I have an answer: I learned the exact location of Alaska, whereabouts previously uknowingly unknown. And this came in handy during the 2008 election, wherein Sarah Palin's addition to the McCain ticket led me to nod sagely and feel somehow extra informed, knowing that I knew exactly where that crazy young state was now.

I learned where Alaska was, oddly enough, in Spanish class. We were doing some exercise that involved locating this snow-machine trodden landscape on a world map, which was regretfully specific in its placement of the various locations it displayed so proudly. That being the case, Alaska was not relegated to a box in any corner of the map. This is of course why I couldn't find it.

I thought the map was broken or something. So I called in the aid of my classmate, who pointed to Canada. Well, a little section of Northwestern Canada.

Me: That's Canada
Him (thinking I'm kidding): No, that's Alaska.
Me: No, that's Canada.
Him (thinking I'm probably kidding): No, that's Alaska, hello.
Me: Hi, why would Alaska be in freaking Canada all the way up there next to Russia? That makes no sense at all.
Him (realizing that I may not be kidding): So where do you think Alaska is?
Me: I dunno, it's usually in the lower right-hand corner of the map, so I guess it's down there somewhere.
Him (realizing that I may have been dropped on my head as a child): Let me get this straight: you think that Alaska is a floating, arctic island off the coast of Florida?
Me (realizing that this is, indeed, what I thought and that, perhaps, I was dropped on my head as a child): Um... yeah, I guess so... but way way down there, like when it gets cold again... ?

At this point various eavesdroppers realized that the kid from Los Angeles couldn't locate Alaska on a World Map, and making matters worse was the fact that (a) I was a Foreign Service major (hey, the planes would get me there, who needs Geography?) and (b) my teacher was Canadian.

After the various jokes were made about the geo-centric attitude of people from L.A. and California in general (I went to Georgetown, which is in Washington D.C.., both of which are populated overall by people who can locate Alaska on a world map), I simply sat, dejected, upset that my childhood maps and teachers had failed me so.

And here's the deal, mapmakers: if you're going to stick Alaska in a freaking box, put the freaking box in the UPPER LEFT-HAND CORNER OF THE MAP. Is that so hard? You manage to put Hawaii and Puerto Rico in their appropriately respective corners of the map, so why are you getting all fancy with Alaska?

People have asked how I never wondered about the differences in climate between Alaska and, say, Barbados. The answer is: I just never thought about it. I'm a visual person, and it didn't occur to me to doubt the very official mapmakers, beacon of hope and learnings for travelers and 3rd graders everywhere. No, it didn't make me scratch my head when I saw pictures of Eskimos, all bundled up and stashed in houses made of symmetrical, perfectly-frozen blocks of ice (OK, maybe those were cartoons). I just figured that Alaska was, you know, far enough down to the right there that the weather got cold again.

Because the world is round, right? (Good thing I had a globe. I just never looked at it too closely.)

People have also wondered how I thought Alaska was an island considering that it has a straight edge. I must admit that, being visual and all, I did notice the straight edge and did correctly assume that something was on the other side of Alaska. What I thought was on the other side, I'm not sure - I sort of had a vague idea that it might be some other... protectorate?... thus making Alaska the arctic counterpart to Hispaniola.

Yeah, that's right, bitches. I knew about Hispaniola. I even knew where it was, sort of. I mean, I knew it was an island somewhere warm and near Spanish-speaking countries, OK? Because it's in the right place on the map, not shoved in a random box somewhere near Iceland.

Anyway, I've named this blog liquid igloo because of this story. Mostly to remind myself that sometimes water is just water.