I thought some of you might appreciate the logic of an eleven year old ...
Our oldest son was the Geography Bee winner for his elementary school and advanced to the district competition. (If you have never heard of a Geography Bee, it is very similar to a spelling bee -- just lots of random social studies questions to answer rather than words to spell. It is sponsored by
National Geographic.)
Justin did very well and made it to the final round as a top ten finisher. After answering a lot of fairly tough questions about things like world religions, national park systems, populations of foreign countries, and other bits of random trivia ... you will not believe the question that knocked him out of the competition. It was in the geographic analogies round.
"Memphis is to Tennessee, as Anchorage is to _______ ."
I had been holding my breath on each question, but when I heard this one I breathed a sigh of relief. And then I caught the look in his eyes. Bless his heart, he had gone totally blank. I could see the wheels turning in his head because he wanted to get an answer out before his 15 seconds expired, and he finally blurted out "Florida."
Here's the part that made me smile ... When I asked him after the competition about that question, he said he was just trying to use word association so that he could answer something and hope the right answer would come to him. Here was the logic he came up with:
Anchorage makes me think of
anchors, anchors makes me think of
ships, ships go on
cruises, we get on the cruise ship in
Florida.
I told my DH that we maybe we should have gone on an
Alaskan cruise instead.