I’m starting to feel worldly.

Yes, it’s true. Learning about geography makes me feel super worldly and knowledgeable about life. I feel less caught up in my own business and more in tune with the world around me. It’s great.

Yesterday I started focusing on the Caribbean/Central American. I’m grouping them together. Sporcle actually considers both of those areas as a part of North America. But how can something be called North and Central at the same time? I find this odd and confusing. So in my mind, North America consists of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. But I can see how Central American countries are technically connected to Mexico and are on the same continent. So I guess it's ok.

But since I’m confident in my abilities to locate the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, I’m not including them in my time of study. I’m not so confident, however, in locating Grenada, for example. When I took the Sporcle quiz, I got a respectable 19 out of 23. This is my best score yet! Yay home continent!

Life oddity of the day:

While in college, I frequently rode the bus from my apartment to the main part of campus. I consider myself to be a fairly friendly person so I usually engaged in small talk with the bus driver, Billy. Billy was not the youngest of fellows; he was probably in his late 70s. He was also quite hard of hearing, so I often had to repeat myself or speak at a volume that felt like yelling.

Billy was quite a character. He had strong opinions about everything and did not seem to fully grasp social norms. He was also pretty forgetful, so he came up with cute little (semi-inappropriate) nicknames for the patrons of the bus. He started calling me Smiley. Most people would probably find this endearing… but I found it confusing. At first, I thought it was meant to be ironic. Like… maybe he was trying to imply that I never smile. But I don’t think that I smile more or less than the average person. It’s like calling someone of average height Shortie. Is it supposed to be accurate or ironic? But I digress.

One day, I boarded the bus and was chatting with Billy. He laughed at something I said (it was most likely extremely witty) and asked if I had a boyfriend. I hesitantly said no. He then took it upon himself to ask the next guy who boarded the bus if he would be willing to take me on a date. The guy smiled awkwardly and sat down without saying anything. I got off the bus as quickly as possible. I didn’t talk to Billy as much after that and even gave him hate glares from time to time. But he still called me Smiley. Don't you love it when old men try to set you up with random people? I know I do...