While making an address on the steps of the Sydney Opera House last September, President Bush accidentally referred to Australia as Austria.
Easy mistake. And hilarious and insulting.
To be fair, all he knew was he had just spent a really long time on a plane. And with the white sails of the Sydney Opera House looming behind him and the Sydney Harbour Bridge spread out in front of him, well, he could have been anywhere.
I'm sure we all could confuse Australia with Austria. When we're in the country. For an important conference.
Perhaps most Americans don't make unintentional fools of themselves in front of the entire Australian populace. However, from my vast social research as an Australian living in Ohio, I've discovered a lot of Americans have seen "Dumb and Dumber" and think it's a pretty funny joke to intentionally mix up Austria and Australia - thus making fools of themselves, but only in front of one Australian, not the entire country.
"You have an accent? Let me guess... you're Austrian."
Hilarious. Let me commend you for your superb wit and extraordinary ability to recall and put your own spin on a line from a '90s movie. You are quite a fountain of topical popular culture.
You would think the torture of hearing this line on a semi-regular basis for the duration of my five-year tenure at Ohio State would be bad enough, but this barely scratches the surface.
I would like to preface my next example of idiotic things people say to me with a quick geography lesson.
So there's this crazy phenomenon called the Coriolis effect. Now, I don't have a Ph.D. in physics so I'm going to refer to Wikipedia here, which states "freely moving objects on the surface of the Earth experience a Coriolis force, and appear to veer to the right in the northern hemisphere, and to the left in the southern."
Bear with me here, but basically what this boils down to is water drains counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern.
Now, it would seem that many college kids are vaguely aware of this fact and apparently feel the need to confirm it when they meet someone from the southern hemisphere.
"You're from Australia? So, does the toilet really flush in the other direction?"
Congratulations, you're only the 700th moron who has watched that episode of The Simpsons and asked me that.
Nevertheless, I try to hide my disdain as well as I possibly can and answer with a civil affirmative and invariably I will be subjected to the idiotic follow-up.
"That's crazy! Does that just freak you out when you come here and the toilets flush the other way?"
Holy crap.
Yes. That totally freaks me out. The direction water drains is a pretty significant factor in the state of my mental stability, I'm not going to lie.
I don't know what it is with these people. I haven't figured out if draining water is a significant factor in the lives of many people or if they just think it's a cool question to ask because there was a Simpsons episode centered around it.
I know I shouldn't be so intolerant, but does anyone care to guess how many times I've been asked if I've ever seen a kangaroo? Or what we eat for Thanksgiving?
Yeah, I've seen a kangaroo. But I do not have a pet kangaroo and I've never ridden a kangaroo.
And Thanksgiving!? Are you kidding me? Because I'm no expert in American history but I'm pretty sure Thanksgiving has something to do with America and no other country in the world.
Finally, the euro is strictly the currency of European countries.
I don't mean to bash Americans. I think you're all nice people (mostly) and I like your country. But you can understand the frustration of being asked infuriating questions over a five-year period.
So my final piece of advice: When meeting a new person from another country, think before you say something stupid.
Briony Clare can be reached at clare.6@osu.edu.
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