Monica's Journal: west virginia and thanksgiving

so one of the main questions people ask acquaintances here today is, "are you going home for thanksgiving?"

    i saw one of my professors today, and in response, i told her pretty succintly that although i grew up in west virginia and consider it my home, i'm seeing my dad at his new house in pennsylvania and meeting my mom at some resort elsewhere in pennsylvania.

    so then she said that her mother lives in west virginia, and i asked her whereabouts. she said, "near morgantown", and when i mentioned that that's where i'm from, she said "oh, well, then, in Philippi." the thing is, philippi's nowhere near morgantown. check out this map. on that map, Morgantown's just south of the "79" in the southwestern corner of pennsylvania, and philippi is two towns directly south. at least i never thought philippi was "near morgantown". i'm sure any philippi resident would disagree with that characterization as well. so i wondered why she might think that. is it because morgantown's where you get off the interstate to get on the road that goes to philippi? because if so, i get off interstate 81 in scranton to come to bard, but i don't consider bard near scranton. is it because it's the closest city? because it's not: clarksburg and weston are both closer, and clarksburg's a larger metro area. then maybe i thought, well, she might have just thrown in morgantown because philippi's not really near anything that anyone in bard might have heard of, and someone might possibly have heard of morgantown. but then, why not say it's near harper's ferry or matewan or something? so i was just baffled. it was weird. but i couldn't really say to her, "no, that's not really close at all."

west virginny

[tonymonkey]

what's important is that further south of philippi is a town called "elkins". you're monica "elkin"ton. coincidence? i think so.

(none)

[daryaei]

not to mention the fact that morgantown is 4 times bigger than philippi