92% of 50

Last night Ryan wondered aloud why I was so terrible with directions, geography, simple math – actually anything that is really practical in my everyday life. He said this much nicer than I have paraphrased, but all of it is true – I only know my right from left about 30% of the time. And then he brought up the fact that I can’t even name the 50 states. So, my friends, we had a little challenge. He was actually very good at this, naming the states in geographic sections, but I do have to tell you that there was a brief minute or so when he was convinced that there were 52 states. You know, 50 continental and then Alaska and Hawaii.

Things slowed down once he got to 45, and then came Arizona and New Jersey. And then things really slowed down. Nebraska trickled in slowly. And by some miracle, I, yes, I, Tessa the geographically challenged, thought of the final three states. Wait. Three? That means we are at 51. And then we got wondering if there really were 52 states! So we thought about it and looked. And looked again. And again. And then came Delaware. And we looked. And looked. And looked again. And then we realized that silly old Montana had snuck on there twice. Thank goodness – only 50! And once Maryland and Alabama came, we had them all. All fifty, nifty states.

So, a couple things:

1) My boyfriend is really smart. Yeah, yeah, I know.

2) Have you heard his 90% theory? He thinks that giving 90% to everything is the best way to go. Most of the time, the energy required to get that last 10% just isn’t worth it.

3) See above. The last 4 states took longer to think of than the first 46 combined. I think he would’ve happily settled for a 92 had he not been out to prove something to me.

4) Yes, that is a grease stain next to Washington and Oregon. It doesn’t please me.

Happy Friday! And congratulations to my sister Ashley! She is graduating from Queens with her master’s degree today! (I hope she learned her 50 states somewhere along the line in her 20 years of education!)