The United States of America is driving me crazy. Oh, I don’t
mean crazy with the voting and the blue states and the red states
and all that.
The United States of America is driving me crazy. Oh, I don’t mean crazy with the voting and the blue states and the red states and all that. I mean crazy in that we have 50 states. I just want to know why. Why do we have 50? Why not 20? Or 10 really big ones? Who decided on 50, anyway?
Because honestly, I think 50 states is just 49 states too many. Oh, I don’t begrudge Wyoming a place in the Union – it’s just that Junior is in the fifth grade. And as any American raised in the public school system can tell you, in the fifth grade, a teacher’s favorite form of torture is making students learn all 50 states and their capitals.
Look, I’ll be honest here. I don’t know all 50 state capitals. In fact, I’m fairly certain that if I were tested today, I would know one capital, Sacramento. Oh, and Washington D.C. but it’s not really a state so it probably wouldn’t count.
In my defense, I never had to learn the state capitals. I didn’t live in the United States when I was in the fifth grade. And frankly, even if my school had made us learn the U.S. state capitals, I probably would have flunked.
I was having a hard enough time living in a country where none of my family could speak one of the two official languages. I remember my mom opening a can one day and saying, “well, we’re either eating dog food or liverwurst sandwiches, I don’t know which.” To this day, I will not touch pate.
But I digress. The simple fact is that Junior, being in the fifth grade, has to learn all 50 state capitals. And because I am his mother, and I have been designated as the “official helper of homework in all areas except math,” I’m learning the capitals with him.
And I have to tell you, I have some issues with this. Look, first of all there are 50. FIFTY. Again, I ask you, who thought that was a good idea? Look at the right side of any map of the U.S. All those little, tiny states on the east coast – who needs them? They’re so small, they’re the size of California counties.
I say take them, mush them together and make one or two big states out of them. It makes life easier for everyone, not just the fifth graders. Think about it. Fewer states equal fewer state representatives. Smaller government. Do you see where I’m going with this?
And what about all those North and South and West states – you know like the Carolinas and the Dakotas and the Virginias? Heck, if they weren’t inventive enough to come up with their own separate and distinctive names, we should just squish them together.
OK, that might be a little drastic – but at least we could make the lives of all fifth graders across the nation a little easier by standardizing the spelling of the state capitals. Look, for every Lansing, there’s a Des Moines just waiting to be misspelled. And what about Boise? Or Juneau? Heck, even my spell checker had a hard time with Juneau.
I ask you, what’s the point of teaching phonics if our states don’t follow the phonetic rules? Boise should be spelled Boysie. And Des Moines should be de Moyn. I have no idea what Juneau would be – maybe something like Juneburg. Or Juneville. Or Juno.
Of course, sometimes even phonetic spellings can trip you up. Take Tallahassee, for example. Who said that Floridians could have so many vowels? Quite frankly, Honolulu may be the perfect state name. It’s easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and it goes with the state name of Hawaii so well that it’s a cinch to remember.
But all my griping is getting me nowhere. I think it’s safe to say that Congress is not going to mush together the entire Eastern Seaboard just so my fifth grader can have an easier year. And it’s probably way too expensive for all the states to re-spell their capitals.
So the only option is to do what my parents did and move out of the country to a place with a just a couple of provinces, if any. Of course, there’s that darned pate vs. dog food issue to be worked out. I mean, if neither Junior nor I can spell the American states – what an earth would we eat for the next year?
Laurie Sontag is a Gilroy writer and mom who wishes parenthood had come with instructions. Her column is syndicated. She can be reached at la****@la**********.com.
