Geography

This girl I know, and by girl I mean an adolescent female, wrote me about her geography test on Europe last week (“you have to put it a half inch of where it is or it's wrong”). She thought it would be annoying to live in the Balkans, because of the long names. I was tempted to tell her that they have many things to be annoyed by, exactly what I don’t know, as a ‘short history’ of the region only succeeded in making my head spin. Does she need to know how many people were beaten up there recently for public displays of affection? Do I tell her how they are barrelling towards their assumed goal of joining the rest of the continent so quickly that peacekeeping duties no longer require the cooperation of the entire North Atlantic, but have been taken over by cosier forces like EUSUK and EULIE. She now knows the capital of Slovenia is Ljubljana (and can actually spell it), do I tell her about the ‘forced relocation—after residents threatened to expel them’ of an extended Roma family in one of its suburbs last month...or should I just mention how a friend went there and everyone was quite nice, and their English was excellent (and that most cities and countries have completely different names in German, not to mention in their own languages).

She’s 13, still at the age where one feels drawn to stem the tide of (oh so overrated) maturity. What to say, what not to say. Hereabouts, members of my own ilk that pay this sort of news any heed (as gauged by witnessing them say boo about it), could easily be counted on one or no hands. Things just drop off the radar, like socialism in the United States, or the following in Germany:

Antihistamine



Bigfoot



Prozac



UFO abductions



Abusive priests