Education Gap...

So, I have a confession.  It's sort of a nerd confession.  Deep breath. Here goes:

NPR is my homepage.

I know, I know.  You can never see me in the same light ever again.  It gets worse...I also watch public television...and like it.

It's B's fault really.  He's like a brainiac.  And when a non-brainiac marries a brainiac, the brainiac wins, because they have brain-power-pull.**  

After years of fighting it, I decided that nerd-power is pretty awesome, and I can dig it.  So, when I opened my laptop today, logged on the internet and got all giddy  began reading NPR, I was intrigued by the title of this article:  'I Was Absent That Day.' 

Hmmm...sounds like the story of my life.  My interest is piqued.

So the cliff's notes version of the article is how there are topics, situations, events, issues etc. in our life that are sort of common knowledge to everyone in this day and age, but somehow you missed it.  You should know it.  But, for all extensive purposes you don't.  It's like a little education gap.  For some reason, you were absent that day. We're not necessarily talking about earth-shattering information here (although it could be), but an example from the article would be not knowing the lyrics of a song. 

We've all been there.  You're jamming, totally into the song playing on the radio (or your media of choice...I am aware that the i-whatever exists) and you flub the words to the song.  Like big time.

I will never forget hanging out with one of my best friends, tooling around town in her car.  Windows down.  Radio blaring.  Wind in our hair.  The next song on the radio was Sisqo's popular song.  You know...that one.  So, I'm singing along at the top of my lungs (cause it's catchy) and at the chorus, I shout out, "Let me sing that soooooooooooong."  My friend immediately turned down the volume, looked at me and asked, "What did you just say?"  I was acting all cool and was like, "You know, let me sing that song.  It's Sisqo." She got super serious and was like, "Nikki.  It's 'let me see that --ong!' You know...as in underware?"  

I was shocked. She died laughing and I felt this big.  Oh well.  Your grandmother could have listened to my version. It was G-Rated!  


That's just a small situation.  I've mispronounced common words in front of groups of people (like carafe...my version had a cute little french flair.  They should totally change the pronunciation), flubbed information, or just flat out didn't know something that everyone knows.  It just happens, as embarrassing as it may be.  You can try to cover it up, but everyone already knows that you just screwed up a little bit.  That's when we all throw out the, "Oops.  My bad," and give a nervous chuckle while looking around to see if we're off the hook.


For all of the above reasons, I LOVED this article.  It validated my education gaps and made me feel like a more complete individual.  
I will be forwarding this article to the overly critical well-meaning individuals in my life, who feel the need to correct my mistake at the second of it's utterance.  (Not really...but, I should)


And, thank you NPR.  Kudos to you for delivering information to the masses and filling in the gaps.

**I should make a disclaimer...this statement (frankly the entire post) is my attempt at being cheeky and funny about A)The fact that my hubby has won me over to NPR and B) That as a super smarty-pants guy it was inevitable that he would convince me that NPR is pretty great. And C) I'm just making fun of myself and my gaps.  I'm sarcastic and this is just a rather silly post.