swaziland.

is this:

a) a reverse transliteration of 'switzerland'.
b) south waziland
c) a very small, landlocked country in africa
d) a weapons manufacturing facility
e) a fictional land that some christians made up to trick you into giving them money.

my mother remarried when i was in grade school; he was a lebanese christian with a colonial french name, so i guess my mom was attracted to middle eastern looking men at the time (my father being quite phenotypically italian and/or jewish). they met through alcoholics anonymous...

he was not initially very christian or very strict about it, but that changed very quickly after they were married. around grade 6 or 7, my mom eventually had to kick him out for punching a hole in the wall out of anger - sober. fwiw, she ended up dating the guy that fixed the hole in the wall....but only after a lengthy binge...

anyways.

they sent me to one sunday school class, when i was around eight or nine. it was at a methodist church in the south of kanata, at fallowfield & eagleson. we went all the way across the city because he didn't want the people at the church to know he had adopted children from his wife's previous marriage; she only went to a service or two, and even i, as a young kid, could figure out the marriage was over after that. that was an insult she never accepted, and that i don't think he ever even understood.

that's as long as i lasted before getting banned - one sunday. and, why?

because i picked (e), and argued the point rather vehemently.

the correct answer is, in fact, (c).

why was i so confident, though?

because i knew the name of every country in africa, could identify each one on a map and even knew the names of all of the capitals. swaziland simply did not exist, because, if it did, i would know where it was, and what it's capital was.

the problem was that my map didn't have swaziland on it, because it's so incredibly small.

but, i would not be deterred. convinced that my fellow children were being taken advantage of for nefarious aims, i disrupted the meeting until it was cancelled, shouting slogans and lecturing the fellow students to think for themselves.

when i came back the following week, we both had atlases with us, and she was able to convince me that the place at least existed by pointing to an area that was listed on my map as a protectorate, rather than a country, although i refused to concede the point, nonetheless - i could see that swaziland existed, but that didn't mean it was a country. what was it's capital? and, it's surrounded by south africa. how can it be a country inside of another country? that was an impossibility to my young mind. so, i was able to see that swaziland is at least a real place, even as i remained skeptical about it's status as an independent state. i walked out convinced i had made my point, and the church was scamming people for aid money, like they do on tv.

they handed me a copy of the beatitudes and asked me not to come back.

i read them.

...and i liked some of them, but didn't like others.

memories are strange things, huh?

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.