Opening Ceremonies and 8th Grade Geography

I watched part of the Olympic opening ceremonies last night. My favorite part is always watching the teams from all the different countries marching into the stadium. I've always been fascinated by other cultures. While watching, I remembered the '76 Olympics, which was held during the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years. I had injured my foot that summer, and had to have a minor surgery, so I spent a few days in the hospital, most of which was watching the Olympics. One of the nurses was a track and field fan, and we found some common ground in a 800 meter runner by the name of Rick Wolhuter. I believe he was the favorite, but alas, he only took the bronze.

After arriving back home, I had to spend some time off my feet. We had a set of Rand McNally atlases, and if memory serves me right, it was a 12 volume set. So, with nothing better to do I memorized every country and it's capital in the whole world.

Every single one.

I'm talking all of them.

Fast forward a few months and I am sitting in my 8th grade geography class at Webster Jr. High, taught by the football coach, Coach Presson. The Coach kind of makes an offhanded remark about the capital of Botswana, thinking nobody would know and I very nonchalantly say "Gaborone". Of course the whole class (20 girls and 7 other boys) looks at me in bewilderment, and the Coach has to actually look it up. "How do you know that?" He asks. I tell him I know all of them. "What do you mean all of them?" and I say "I know every capital of every country in the world" So then he asks me a few more, and of course I get them right. Then one of the girls blurts out "Clark, you are so fruit!" Yeah, whatever. Anyway every day from then on the Coach would ask me the capital of some country. Once he tried to get me on a technicality but it didn't work. He never did stump me.

Unfortunately I have not retained that information over the years. In fact I had to look up the capital of Botswana to write this blog! Chalk it up to old age.

Ironically, I have never traveled outside of the United States.