Messing with My World

I look at the same map every day.  It is on the wall of my cubicle at work.  The map divides the country into regions.  And it pisses me off.

I have to keep track of our company representatives who work in each part of the States. In the individual regions, there are photos of the reps smiling honestly, but I know they are part of this map propaganda. 

Oh, I learned the regions in grade school.  I was fascinated with geography back then.  My family had a set of World Books, and one of my favorite past-times was to study the states and their attributes.  I would look at the state flags, mottos, birds, and flowers.  I would memorize the shape of each state and its capitol.  I would observe the state’s region.  And hence, this company map mocks me daily.

I excelled in Geography in school, given all the prior study I had completed at home.  I learned the different regions:  New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, Great Lakes, Midwest, Southwest, Mountain and Pacific.  The company map has five regions.  Yes, only five:  North Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, Central and Northwest.  My biggest gripe:  both Ohio and Nevada are in the Central region.  Wonderful.  They are only about 1,800 miles apart.  It’s like grouping Romania and Azerbaijan in the same continent.

This company map shouldn’t bother my aesthetic, but it does.  In attempting to confirm my original understanding of the different regions, I could find only one map on the internet that supported my original division of the States.  Well, I guess I shouldn’t be so persnickety.  I suppose that Akron and Reno are closer than I originally imagined.