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Humorist and amateur cartographer Gregg Holtsclaw joins us this week with a guest column. In compliance with StolenSoap's editorial guidelines and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, all references to Menudo have been deleted.

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People disappearing? Forget about the triangular lights or black helicopters that conspiracy theorists complain about. Don't sweat about alien probes. Worry about entire countries disappearing. Gone. Vanished.

Back when Knight Rider was still on television I had to do a report about Equador. (Let's not even talk about my Huckleberry Finn report I delivered wearing pants made out of brown grocery bags and a straw hat that poked a girl in the eye, sending her screaming into a fist flailing rage. Don't hate the player girl, hate the game.) As I read, in defiant monotone, about the exports of Equador; oil, coffee and uh… yeah… whatever it was, I really felt a connection to the country. Well, mostly I was excited about the "q" in Equador. Hey, I grew up in Texas and Indiana, a "q" word was a big deal. If it wasn't for video games, an entire generation of Texan and Hoosier kids might have grown up to be literate, because there wasn't anything better to do than read. Eh, probably not. I digress.

I read an article recently that talked about a summit in Ecuador. Something about the article bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Somewhere between debating Ron Artest's sanity and Lindsay Lohan's — er, natural aspects — it hit me. Someone stole the "q." At first I thought the writer must have been a moron. How could you screw up the "q?" I mean, the letter "q" is so cool that it takes the place of nicknames. Even professional athletes, like Quentin Richardson of the Phoenix Suns, go by the one-letter "Q" nickname. This writer was getting an email from me. No way are you shortchanging the people of Equador. No. Way.

Instead of cracking open a dictionary, I did the next best thing, I googled "Equador." It was alarming. Evidently 20, 800, 000 entries spelled Equador with a "c." 895,000 people spelled it with a "q." I don't admit to being wrong often. And I am not good at math. But you can't argue with 20 million people against you. Unless you have Jet Li backing you up. And I don't.

After some research I discovered the best explanation was that "qua" and "quo" sounds become a "c" in Spanish. For nearly 16 years I have mistakenly bought into the idea that you spell Ecuador with a "q." Now that is some embarrassing stuff. Can you imagine being in Hooters or The Taphouse discussing geopolitics and slipping a "q" based Ecuador in the conversation? The shaming that Skeeter would give you over the wings would be terrible. And there is no way would you make it out of a coffeehouse alive using the "q", those people take things seriously. I still have a scar from a Scrabble game that went wrong.

Evidently the "q" spelling had truly died out by 1998, probably not coincidentally after oil prices and inflation sparked an economic crisis. Increasing the economic disaster in Ecuador, the national currency of Ecuador, the sucre, crashed in 1999. The dollar was voted in as the official currency of Ecuador in 2001 as a way to stabilize the country's economy. So a "q" deprived, financially ruined Ecuador adopted the dollar. What happens if gasoline supplies continue to rise? Does the dollar keep crashing and we adopt the Euro? Will we then have to adapt to transportation by train or drinking wine with every meal? I really hope not, I don't think I could take having to memorize another series of states and capitals. Let alone having Frosted Flakes and Merlot.

Copyright © 2005 Gregg
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

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