89.

So. There I was, in a stranger's house, speaking a foreign language, wearing unfamiliar clothes, and in general trying not to make an ass of myself. The subject of conversation - which I could barely follow, anyway - turned to Indian history. People were debating what point in time, exactly, could be considered the beginning of the Indian Independence Movement.

"A lot of scholars trace the Indian Independence Movement to the Sepoy Mutiny," I said knowledgeably, in "Hindi." (Something like, "Indian Independence Movement vo Sepoy Mutiny se shuru hua) The conversation ground to a halt. For the third time that day (the first being when I tripped on my chuni and nearly brained myself, the second when I refused a second cup of tea) people looked at me as if I were a specimen from another planet.

I couldn't speak to my parents over the phone (no connection) but much later on I told my uncle this story. He started laughing uproariously. "You said that?" he demanded, wiping tears from his eyes. I bristled at the suggestion that I'd done something wrong. "In general," he informed me, "Indian people think 'Sepoy Mutiny' is a denigrating, racist and colonialist term." I gathered that in some academic circles, saying 'sepoy' is akin to using the n-word. "How could I have known that?" I protested.

How, indeed.

After all, I learned this term in IB World History. Shouldn't that count for something? As it turns out, it counts for squat. I still remember the first time I made a mistake like this. I was standing beneath a statue of Cervantes in the middle of Madrid. Our tour guide was talking - in Spanish, because I can't humiliate myself enough in my native tongue - about how Cervantes was one of Spain's greatest heroes.

"Yes, but he was a raving lunatic," I opined. I was repeating, word for word, a remark an English teacher had made to me in years past.

People might suggest that I run into these difficulties because I can't resist the urge to run my mouth, and they'd be right. But on the other hand, what's an education for, if you can't share it with others?

I mean, if someone showed up in my neighborhood and said, casually, that Abraham Lincoln was an illiterate, godless hick, I might be annoyed. (And if you're going to argue any of these points, remember that great story we learned as kids about how Honest Abe taught himself to read and write with a shovel and a piece of coal? How far can a man get with a shovel and a piece of coal? Exactly. Also, he never belonged to any religion. And in 1809, everyone was a hick.) But anyway - I'd be offended to hear it said.

I ran into these difficulties, ultimately, because I was speaking a language I didn't perfectly understand and repeating ideas taught to me by people who had a) never lived in the country b) didn't speak the language c) had no friends who grew up in that country d) had never read an entire book about the country and e) still felt qualified to teach about it.

I still remember my seventh grade Hinduism unit. My well-intentioned teacher taught us numerous fun facts about the religion. Upon later examination of the Gita and Vedas, almost every one of these facts turned out to be wrong.

But I'm making two separate points. The first is that not every word has the same weight everywhere, and this is especially true when dealing with history. And the other is that sometimes, the things we we are taught (particularly about small countries or unfamiliar religions) are just plain incorrect.

By the time I went to Italy, of course, I adopted a mandate I picked up in IB Philosophy: like Socrates, I decided that "all I knew was that I knew nothing." When the conversation around bars turned to great writers of modern Italy, I merely said, "How about that Umberto Eco?" with the best possible accent and a mysterious smile. Soon enough the expats and lit profs in the audience would be going at each other with salad forks. Afterwards the survivors (because believe me, these duels sometimes went to the death) said to me, "God, you're so smart for an American."

"We're a pretty smart people," I replied, and left it at that.