Everyone gather around. A serious situation has recently been brought to my attention and I think you all need to listen.

Two girls were vactioning abroad and ran into some Canadians. Being in Europe, it was a joy for both parties involved to have a conversation with other English speaking people.

The conversation began with the typical “what’s your name” and “where are you from.” It then progressed into the deeper topics of “where have you been so far?”

The conversation eventually turned to idle trivia, and the Canadians asked the Americans if they knew who was the prime minister of Canada.

The girls didn’t know. I don’t know. How many of you know?

I guess this story wouldn’t have bothered me so much if the two Canadians had been equally ignorant about American trivia, but quite the opposite is true.

The American girls learned this the hard way with much scolding from the Canadians.

After discussing this further with respected authorities on international relations, I learned that the majority of Canadians, as well as most countries in the world, have a thorough knowledge of the United States.

They know who runs in our political elections each year (some even unofficially take sides), they know most of our past presidents, what our imports and exports are, our most precious commodities and heaven only knows what else.

The average American probably doesn’t know as much about our country as everyone else does.

When was the last time you saw an article on the problems in Africa and actually cared enough to read it?

Doesn’t affect you so why read it. Right?

How much knowledge can you spout off about the current problems in the Middle East? Colombia?

I can, however, see Colombia being more popular since it does deal with drugs, and everybody’s concerned with drugs lately.

But, do you see my point?

I was in Europe not too long ago, and it is amazing how different (more intellectual) bar conversations are there.

Here we talk about who’s messing around with who, what the plans are for the weekend, “golly that’s a great sweater, where did you get it?” and other ever so earth-shattering topics.

In Europe actual world news is discussed. Really! They are knowledgeable on quite a variety of world events and they enjoy discussing them.

Nobody get defensive now, because I don’t think we are acting with any actual malice. It’s what our culture has taught us. It’s just the way things are, and apparently have been for awhile.

But, if you think hard about it, is that the way we want things to be in the future?

Do we want our children growing up oblivious to the world around them? We are missing so much that we cannot even comprehend it because we have no idea how much is out there.

I’m just throwing out some food for thought because frankly, my ignorance scares me.

America might be the number one bad boy now, but is that because we are truly the best, most advanced, culturally responsible people, or do we just have the biggest, baddest weapons?

I don’t know. I just don’t know