Ignorance
My mom says that when I was a kid there were very few things that would stress me out more than not being able to pronounce a word correctly. Oddly enough, I learnt a lot of my danish as a kid growing up in Aalborg talking to danish kids at my day care, so naturally my spanish (and later my english) was not the best for a 4 or 5 year old trying to juggle thoughts in spanish and danish. Later on in my youth I had the chance to live in Michigan for about 2 months to study music, and ever since that trip I believe ignorance and not mispronunciation is what REALLY stresses me out. Not just from others, but also in myself, when people have absolutely no idea of basic/common knowledge and when I feel that I am the one who ignores entirely something that should be known... I don't know if it's being obsessive or what but it gets under my skin, let me explain with a small story that happened to me.
I will never forget this phrase a girl said to me in Michigan when I told her I was from Costa Rica... I was 14 maybe 15 years old so I do not expect kids my age to be Neil Degrasse Tyson, but if you don't know just ask... "Oh wow! you're from Costa Rica! I could not tell because of your english!" - Lets pause her statement right there. See? everything could have gone great if she had just stayed there, complimented my english or asked where my country is, or tell me she's never heard of it, or ANYTHING except for what came next! - "I didn't know Mexicans could speak english." - you read that right... Those were the words she decided to use right after complimenting me for my english.
Her attitude while saying that did not help at all. However, my point is not to mock her for her ignorance, my point is: THAT kind of train of thought is what makes me very uncomfortable. She did not mean to indirectly put down mexicans and me... She just had NO idea what I was talking to her about and took the I-think-I-know-it-all-lane instead of asking or just saying she did not know or anything else, and yes she did say what she said in a serious tone, no joke or sarcasm came out when she said it.
So yeah, I get stressed out when I feel I should know something, like that time when I met people from Bahrain for the first time and had NO IDEA about where their country is located, the capital, or anything else for that matter...
