One Of Our 50 Is Missing - April 2010
After more than two decades, thousands of our readers have shared their experiences of lost New Mexico in the "One of Our 50 is Missing" humor column, compiled by managing editor Walter K. Lopez. Tell us your experiences at fifty@nmmagazine.com.
BLOWING OFF STEAM: Lawrence and Deborah Blank, part-time residents of Corrales, admit that they were fortunate to be able to tour the observatories on Mauna Kea, one of five dormant volcanoes that make up the Big Island of Hawaii. They also received an unexpected bonus from the tour guide.
“One of the PhD astronomers acted as a guide,” Lawrence says, “and when asked if their ‘very long baseline array’ dish was tied into the Very Large Array, he said that this dish was looking at different wavelengths than the VLA in Arizona.”
When the Blanks gently corrected him, the guide was taken aback, and questioned New Mexico’s role in the system.
“We explained that the VLA was on the Plains of San Agustín, near Socorro, New Mexico,” Lawrence says. “He said, ‘OK, I guess I stand corrected,’ but he didn’t sound convinced. Hopefully, he’ll look it up, and not keep making the same mistake on subsequent tours.”
C’EST LA VIE: While visiting the Paris Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Janie S. Noble and her husband, of Rio Rancho, seemed to experience some bad luck in their very first encounter.
“We were signing up for player’s cards at the casino, and the woman helping us seemed to be having some difficulty entering our information into the computer,” Noble says.
Finally, after fiddling with the info for a while, the lady turned to another customer-service rep nearby:
“How do you enter New Mexico, because I can’t find it in my list of countries?”
“ ‘Countries?’ her colleague joined my husband and me in quickly exclaiming,” says Noble. “‘It’s not a country, it’s one of the 50 states.’ My husband gave her a quick geography lesson, patiently explaining that New Mexico is the state between Arizona and Texas. After a brief pause, she acknowledged the fact. ‘Oh, I knew that.’”
That response drew some giggles from the Nobles. “It wasn’t obvious to us that she knew,” says Janie Noble.
Wii, THE PEOPLE: Albuquerque resident Adam Trionfo admits that his teenage son enjoys playing his Nintendo as much as any other kid in the country, which is why Adam went online to prolong the boy’s contentment.
“I purchased 2,000 points for Nintendo Wii,” Trionfo says. “The transaction went smoothly enough, but when the receipt was displayed on the screen, it showed that the transaction country was Mexico.”
Trionfo eventually cleared up the matter, but said that “Now that I know I don’t live in the United States, I’m worried about him using his USA Wii in a foreign country without an adapter. I’m headed straight out to get an international voltage-converter kit to make sure that the expensive electronics in his Wii are not damaged!”
