State of annoyance

In a fit of mental agility, my flatmate, her boyfriend and I decided to play the States Game (you know, the one where you have to name all of the states).

We got off to a bad start when we couldn't agree on whether there are 50 states or 52.

I think we did quite well for non-Americans. We got 48, but we realised that we'd made up 3 of them, so in actual fact we got 45. Apparently Arkansas and Arkansaw are the same place, there is no state of Chiboigan (I think it's a city), nor is there a state of Milwalkee or East Virginia (which is really stupid, because if there's a West Virginia and a Virginia then SURELY there should be an East one too).

The ones we missed were Oregon, Maine, Nevada, Louisiana, Vermont, Wyoming and Utah.

I was cross about the Vermont one because it's the place that Diane Keaton runs off to in Baby Boom. We were all cross about Utah because it's massive and it's where the Mormons live. We were cross about Louisiana because of the many songs.

We agreed it would have been unlikely that we would have got Wyoming. And the boyfriend was upset that he didn't get Maine.

But otherwise, we thought we did pretty well.

Then we looked at state capitals...woah, bad idea! The capital of New York State is not, as one may think, New York City - it's Albany. The capital of California is not Loa Angeles or Hollywood, but in fact Sacramento. The capital of Florida is Tallahassee (come on! Is that even a word?!). And the one that bugged me most, the capital of Illinois is not Chicago, noooooooo, it's Springfield. Honestly!

So we were all a bit annoyed about that and figured that unless we were planning to become American (no chance, too much of a faff to get a green card and we kind of like our wee island I think) then it wouldn't really make a great deal of difference to our lives if we didn't know the state capitals.

I'm sure American people will think we are stupid, but hey, if Ross Geller can't get them all then how are we expected to?!?!?!