Jack Kukoda

Over the weekend, I casually asked my roommate a question about Australia. He responded, “Australia the country or Australia the continent?” I asked him what the difference was and he gave me some convoluted answer about islands and sovereignty. His basic point was that if an island is part of a country, that island belongs to the same continent that its country belongs to. I told my rommate that he didn’t know what he was talking about. He said I was wrong.

“What about Hawaii?” I said “That’s part of the United States, but it’s not part of North America.” “Yes, it is,” my roommate responded. I told him that he was an idiot and that not every land mass necessarily belongs to a continent. Then my roommate, for some reason, started to name the continents. There’s only seven, so it wasn’t hard. I don’t know what this had to do with his argument, and I think he was just trying to buy himself some time to figure out what to say. He continued to claim that every island in the world was part of one of the seven continents. Again, I told him he was an idiot. So I asked him, “What about the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin Islands? They’re located literally miles apart in the Caribbean, but, by your logic, one is part of Europe and the other is part of North America.” He didn’t have an answer for that. “I thought so, jackass,” I taunted him. “How’s your little continent theory working out now?”

According to my roommate, you are looking at two different continents.

I really had him here. A look of confusion and anger came over his face and, balling up his little fists, he blurted out, “Oh yeah? Well…what did you get on your SAT’s?”

At first I thought I had misheard him. I mean, there’s no way a twenty-six year-old man with a graduate degree would try to weasel his way out of an argument by asking me what I got on my SAT’s, right? Right? Isn’t that the sort of question people stop asking by their sophomore or junior year of college?

I made sure I hadn’t misheard him. “Did you just ask me what I got on my SAT’s, you fucking jackass?” I asked him. He acted like he didn’t hear me, and continued with his rather sad line of questioning. “Huh, what did you get? Was it better than (his score)? Huh?”

“You are pathetic,” I responded. “You are a sad little man. You know, it’s too bad there isn’t a section on the SAT’s about how to be a giant pussy, because you definitely would have gotten an 800 on it.”

I think my roommate immediately regretted bringing up the SAT’s, because he knows it’s the sort of thing that I’ll taunt him with for months. You better believe the next time we’re at a party and he’s talking to a pretty girl, I’ll sidle up to them and say, “Hey, Matt, remember that time you had taken a ridiculous position in an argument, and then to cover it up, you started bragging about your SAT scores? Remember that? Boy, that was cool. Almost as cool as that time last year when you fell off your bike and started crying. Anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt. You two kids enjoy the party.”

God, I can’t wait to do that.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about continents. Apparently, there are some different theories about islands belonging to continents, but I think I’m right on this subject.

Previous Roommate Posts:
Games My Roommate Plays
My Roommate, The Published Writer, Is Also Very Smart