Over a late night dinner of salads, Hockey Phil and I had a very philosophical conversation about meeting new people in the City on a Hill. After listening to the play-by-play of practically every person he's ever met, I mentioned my one pet peeve about meeting people who have yet to survive their first Boston winter: their lack of geographical knowledge.
Boston has always been a somewhat transient town. College students come and go, while professionals from sea to shining sea have always been drawn to our strong economy. Unlike most parts of the country native massholes will never mention their county when describing where they live, giving newcomers 351 separate cities and towns to mentally place on a map. It's a daunting task and I doubt that even the most hard-core masshole could describe in detail where every single zip code in this state resides.
As a fairly empathetic person I can understand why someone new to the Boston area may not have a good lay-out of the greater Boston territory. However, if you've been here for years and still don't have a clue where anything outside the Green Line is located then you're just a little (ok, a lot) arrogant. If you're bragging about completing a 3 year masters program at one our elite universities but can't give me a ballpark location of places like Burlington, Westboro, and Brockton I have no choice but to assume that you've either never read a local newspaper or you simply do not care about this area and have no intention of sticking around past graduation.
Hockey Phil (a native masshole) thinks that I'm being unreasonable but I seriously beg to differ. People kick and scream that immigrants to the United States need to learn English; I'm simply advocating that people who choose to make Boston a part of their lives have a basic understanding of where surrounding towns are located. For example, newly minted massholes needn't know the latitute and longitute of Gloucester, which towns it borders, or how many men they sent to fight in the Civil War. They simply need to have the skills necessary to mentally place Gloucester somewhere north of Boston in their highly educated minds. Extra credit can be awarded if you learn about a town that is located off of the Mohawk Trail.
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2 comments:
I agree. For the record, when I was in college I could give directions better than a native Long Islander and have a fairly good understanding of every county in Maryland.
OMG. I could NOT agree more (and thanks for the shout-out to Wboro, by the by, which I have decided to take as a personal affirmation of love from you). I especially love it when I tell people where i live and they respond with a rousing "why???????????" in a manner akin to one i might use if you told me you were putting down your dog...or that your dog had puked in your Coach bag.
What's even worse is when people can't even COMPREHEND the idea of driving more than 5 minutes in any direction to go ANYWHERE. We had an event last week in Framingham. Framingham. as in the town that's probably a 20 minute commute from boston on a bad day. And seriously, my Boston coworkers were planning on having sleepovers at others' houses, so that they didn't have to go all the way home. Well it's a lot to travel in one day, you know?? Bring a lunch.
OH and then people started complaining about the Metrowest "aesthetic." Don't even get me started on that one. :P
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