Day 4: World Coloring-in Day
Posted: January 4, 2011 Filed under: The Book | Tags: adventure, strangers, travel 3 Comments
Update, 6/3/11: This has been, oddly, the most popular post on this blog for months, at least according to the stats WordPress gives me. So, people who came here to find a map: stay a while, read a few other posts, maybe leave a comment — like, how did you get here? Thanks.
Today’s page in the Book is a blank world map – like the one right next to this text, except with the countries labelled in very small type – with instructions to color in the countries: green for those you’ve been to, blue for those you’re going to this year, yellow for those you’re going to eventually, and red for those you have no desire to ever visit.
This is a depressing activity for me. I’ve been to Canada (several times) and to Mexico, but – aside from a week-long “educational tour” of Europe (Munich, Paris, and London, and the highways in between) when I was about 14 – I haven’t been anywhere else. And, because of the relatively small amount of money that I make and the two money pits children that live with me, I have little hope of doing much world-traveling during the next decade.
This is, obviously, unacceptable. I thought briefly about selling my children on the black market, but that seemed a bit heartless, even for me. Instead, I’m going to start saving cash now, and, on January 1st of 2012, I’m going to fly to Dublin and backpack around the world. I can work odd jobs, sleep in parks, scavenge food from trash bins, shoplift – and I’ll probably turn to prostitution and thuggery before I’ve made it across the English Channel. I’m leaving Lorna and the kids at home, where I’m sure they’ll be taken care of by family, friends, and various government agencies.
My plan is to wander across Europe – from the UK to the Low Countries, to France, Spain, Portugal, Monaco, Italy, Germany, &c – then through all those old Soviet satellites, across Siberia, through the Koreas into Japan, to China, around southern Asia, back westward through all the -stans and into the Fertile Crescent, and from thence into Africa. Assuming I make it that far, I’m hoping to hijack a pirate frigate in Madgascar and hit the Australasian countries on my way to South America – and once I get there, I’m as good as home, right?
My alternate plan is to reform Pangaea and walk it in a sort of squashed spiral from the center outward. That might actually be a better plan…
Dang – your father and I should have thought of this when you and your brother were young! I’m sure someone in the family would have taken you in.
I found you through a yahoo search. I teach Sunday School and needed a world map to show where PA (USA) was in relation to Israel. Thanks!
You are hilarious! I was looking for a world map for my sixth graders to label when I clicked onto your site. I find kids today know shockingly little about the world in which they live, including even the names of the continents.