Typically Americans are given grief for not knowing what's going on outside their borders and in general being pretty abysmal at geography. The jokes are pretty standard and cemented in the minds of those abroad. If you watch the local news, it's pretty apparent what they're on about. I'm mean the news here is pretty, er, localised shall we say? " School children in Pine Hills are assembling the largest noodle picture on construction paper in the history of modern education. Weighing in at 3 tons and requiring enough pasta to feed a small army, they've been hard at work for weeks..."
Being hyper conscious of this, I've always made it a policy to try to catch headlines for international news at the very least. Since I studied Political Science at university it was a requirement, since graduation I am at bare minimum a skimmer of global news.
The trouble is that I've just about stopped watching local news. As such the typical American 'localised news malady' if not in effect with me. My particular affliction seems to manifest itself in reverse. The result is that I'm happy to update you on the 'local' news of the military coup in Thailand, give you an opinion on the Israel/Lebanon conflict or brief you on what I glimpsed about a dengue fever outbreak in India. The part which now plagues my mother's already fragile internal maternal alarm is that I have no idea what is actually happening in my own part of the world. When I say my own part of the world, I'm talking less about America and more about say Florida or western Florida or if you want to get technical the towns I work and live in.
Let me demonstrate the scope of this by saying the last storm alert we had for a hurricane, people were gearing up as is their wont and I strolled into work one morning, cool as a cucumber, not a worry in my head beyond work. Everyone asks about my plans for the predicted storm. It's rather disturbing to have to look at a small number of concerned faces and answer "what storm?"
"The storm that's all over the news!" People and Amanda in particular exclaim to me.
"I didn't hear about it..." I say defensively.
"Well, what the hell are you watching?" they ask.
"BBC World News...did you know Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon yesterday?"
So Amanda has, I believe, (much to my mother's relief not doubt) taken on the responsibility of ensuring that should we have a major storm that I'm verbally alerted in person and relocated to a safe place.. as opposed to still sitting in my living room glued to the latest middle eastern conflict on BBC while the entire state evacuates around me.
In my defense, this is probably why I missed the thing about the spinach too. My mother rang and said "I wanted to make sure you knew about the spinach."
"What about spinach?" I asked.
"You're not to eat it if it's bagged, there's been an Ecoli breakout!" she warned.
"What before lunch?" I asked.
"What? Days ago. What lunch? What did you have for lunch?"
"Salad.... with a bit of spinach"
"Well how much spinach is that?'
"I dunno," I answer "enough for a full plate of salad. Like a half bag or something."
"A half a bag? Bagged spinach? You ate bagged spinach? Why would you do that?" she asked as if I'd just told her I'd taken a bath with the hairdryer plugged in as a dare.
"No reason not to." I answered reasonably.
"IT'S ALL OVER THE NEWS! HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW, CHILD?" You can tell she's getting exasperated when she calls me 'child.'
"I was watching BBC....hey, did you hear about China?"
It is a testament to my mother's concern for her children, despite our advancing ages, that she will call me later that night to ensure I haven't some how become infected with the bacteria since lunch that day. It is a testament to her penchant for worrying that will lead her to leave a message saying that she's now even more worried because I haven't answered the phone and would I please call her back as soon as possible so she knows I'm not bacteria ridden.
It's unclear if my calling her back the second I got the message, is a testament to my wanting to reassure her I was okay or that I was too impatient to wait an extra day to make fun of her for the latest worry-wart-mum tale which I'm adding to my collection. We'll just go with the dutiful daughter theory, shall we?
