Humiliation is, apparently, addictive

It’s one thing to know something about yourself that is, let’s say, not a plus, like “I’m not awesome at geography,” but it’s another thing to have it demonstrated, repeatedly, to truly make you understand that you should be humiliated.

I, in fact, am not perfectly awesome about where countries lay on the globe, but hey, I thought, I’m OK at it. Then I took a little online name-those-countries-in-15-minutes quiz on Sporcle.com and found out just how badly I have failed all the wonderful teachers in the Montana education system. They meant well, they tried hard, but it’s me, not them.

The quiz shows a map of the countries of the world, and the quiz-taker just has to type in the names of the countries and each correct answer is displayed on the map. Easy peasy, lemon squee— what? Yeah. My first test score was a 42 percent. That’s a big, fat F if you’re keeping score.

I was not upset much because the average is 67 percent, and surely once I got my brain warmed up all would be exceptional-me again.

I refreshed the screen and prepared to amaze the world – with 41 percent this time. Somehow, in the space of 10 seconds, waiting for the internet to reload the page, I got stupider. No worries, I thought. I’m a quick study, and each time the quiz timed out it displayed all the country names. I reviewed the answers.

I got 40 percent the third time.

This was an alarming trend.

And to add insult to injury, I finally noticed the quiz was shooting lame insults at me with each failing score: “You came, you saw, you got conked!” What. Ever. That’s not even funny, and I responded logically and decively by getting completely hooked on the game anyway.

According to the counter that tracks the number of times the game has been play, plus my best estimation, this week I can account for roughly .5 million of the 11.5 million total plays in the game’s history.

I didn’t mean to — it’s just that Europe has a spectacular number of countries which I could not name to save my life. And I’m not just talking about countries like Andorra, which is a real country even though it sounds like the name of one of those fancy American Girl dolls.

Europe has something like 14 “ee-uh” named countries like Austria, Czechia, Armenia, Lithuania and Romania, that end with the “ee-uh” sound. And, yes, I have officially petitioned Merriam-Webster dictionary to have Russia pronounced “Rush-ee-uh.” Just because.

It’s not only Europe. The Middle East, Asia and Africa also have a lot of countries I couldn’t name, as did South America and Central America. I did pretty good with North America, although I had a touch of trouble with the spelling of my homeland.

I was whipping right along typing “Untied States.” No go, the program said. Um, OK, “of America”? Nope. I live here. I know things. Don’t tell me. you prefer “of Amerigo Vespucci”? Aaaargh! Oh, wait. I spelled United wrong. We’re good. My bad.

Spelling was a common problem: “Lichtenstein.” “Lichtenstine.” “Lichtinstein”! ... “Lichtinstine”? AAARGH! Three seconds left! “Licked.in.stine!” You, great big inventive cuss word!!!

Times up. Liechtenstein, the website informed me.

Really? What the— Don’t even get me started on the trouble my fingers have with spelling Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is one long name to fat-finger on a keyboard. Try typing Kyrgyzstan. And Luxembourg, why does a tiny country that is smaller than Rhode Island need an extra “O” in its name. Ridiculous. How is an American public school graduate of no distinction supposed to know that.

On the other hand, I did know Papua New Guinea. It’s said to be the most culturally diverse country in the world with more than 800 spoken languages in this modest-sized Pacific Island nation. It’s also home to a small religious sect that believes in cannibalism for a burial ritual, and because of this, the sect members have a statistically high number of people with the human form of mad cow disease. Don’t ask me how I know this — because I will tell you in minute detail about the article I read ,and you will be equal parts horrified and bored numb, and somehow come out on the other end afraid to eat hot dogs. It’s a long story.

And it’s all beside the point that when I finally scored in the upper 50 percentile, the quiz started using better insults.

At 56 percent I got “Way to let out your inner Joey Tribbiani on this quiz” — Joey being the dumb one on the old TV sitcom “Friends.” At 59 percent it was “Ooh, you were soooo close to the average. Well, not that close actually.” There it is, a nice dry wit. And at 65 percent I got, “How very beige of you.” Perfect. A short, efficient, straight-up insult.

I am determined to continue playing until the game compliments me. It doesn’t have to call me pretty, but brilliant will do.

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I can’t quit you at [email protected].