Canada Man !
The other day, my wife and I were wandering through a local festival market. She was giving me the "grand tour" of typical West Virginian food when we stopped to chat with a guy at one of the stalls.
As soon as he heard my accent, he looked up. "Hey, where you from?"
"The Netherlands," I told him.
He didn't miss a beat. "Oh, I know! That’s in Canada, right?"
I paused for a second. "No... pretty sure it’s in Europe."
He looked me dead in the eye, totally serious. "Are you sure? Because I’ve been to Canada."
I had to laugh. "Well, I flew over an entire ocean to get here, so yes, I’m fairly positive." He still wasn't convinced, though. As we walked away, I’m pretty sure he still firmly believed I was his neighbor from the north.
It was one of those moments that feeds right into the stereotype we often see on social media—that Americans think the world is just the U.S. and then a big, blurry "everywhere else." I was ready to write the whole afternoon off as a lesson in bad geography.
But then, just a few minutes later, we ran into another man. Still reeling from the Canada comment, I braced myself when he asked where I was from.
"The Netherlands," I said, waiting for the punchline.
"What part?" he asked.
I figured he was just being polite, so I gave a vague answer: "The center."
He didn't let me off that easy. "Yeah, but what city?"
Now I was curious. "Near Utrecht," I said, figuring that would definitely puzzle him. To my surprise, he nodded. "Okay, I’ve been there. I actually worked in Flushingeun—or something like that." I asked him to spell it, and it turned out he had worked in Vlissingen years ago. We ended up having a fantastic chat about his time there.
The surprises kept coming, too. A few nights later, we went to a stand-up comedy show and sat with two other couples. Somehow, it came out that both couples had traveled to the Netherlands. Instead of just a funny show, we ended up having these great, deep conversations at the table about our different cultures.
It’s easy to depict all Americans as ignorant based on a few viral videos or one guy at a market who thinks Europe is in Canada. And true—some people really are that lost! But there are so many people here who know way more than we give them credit for.
Don’t let social media cloud your judgment. Life in the Appalachians is full of people who might just surprise you.
