CINQUANTE!

This is the American flag.
It has 50 stars and 13 stripes.
50 stars to represent the 50 states, and 13 stripes to represent the original thirteen colonies.
This I've known since about 2nd grade. I've had it pounded, no, brainwashed, into my head. I've had songs sung to me about it. I've had to color in countless maps and images of whatsherface sewing the first flag and George Washington with a stars 'n' stripes wig photocopied during fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and while learning about my Motherland.

YET.
Speak to a Frenchman and years of my American upbringing are not only discredited, they are laughed at, and then doubted.

My coworkers and my boss's husband are convinced that there are fifty one states within the United States. STATES. Not districts, not territories, but official, damn STATES. What bothered me was not that they were entirely wrong about the additional nonexistent state, but that they had no shred of doubt that they were wrong. In fact, so eager were they to prove me, an American, who happens to live within those FIFTY states, wrong, they brushed off all my attempts at disproving them, including bringing in a list of the states that I had haphazardly written off the top of my head in the metro, saying that they would find the last state that I had forgotten. Did I mention that one of them thought Los Angeles was a state and the other thought that Mexico was part of the US? Anyway, even after writing out the list, the most twisted thing was that I had forgotten Massachusetts. MASSACHUSETTS for crying out loud. Why couldn't I have forgotten Idaho or something... I stormed out of the bakery so enervated that they had somehow still come up with 51 states that I second guessed myself and poured over what I had written -- recounting the numbers and seeing if I had doubled any states. My coworkers laughed at me as I walked out dejectedly, scratching their balls and ho-ho-ho ing in arrogance while no doubt comparing penis sizes afterwards.

BUT I suppose it was my fault for writing Philadelphia as a damn state. Damn it.
Why name a cream cheese after a city? Bastards.
They'll be hearing from me tomorrow...