Stephanie Worsop: Are the gaps in our knowledge getting worse?

Anything to do with my car falls into the category of knowledge gap. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

The other week my mum and I were having our weekly video chat when we started talking about travelling.

I said I would love to visit my friend Saara and go with her to Stockholm to see the Northern Lights.

Mum looked confused and said, "why would you go to Stockholm to see the Northern Lights when you can see them in Finland?" (where my friend lives).

I rolled my eyes and said, "Mum, Stockholm IS in Finland, it's the capital".

No, Stephanie. It's not.

Turns out I've had the capital cities of Finland and Sweden mixed up in my head for years.

Goodness knows what other geographical knowledge I'm lacking.

Looking at a map right now, I'm sinking in my chair as I realise Brazil is NOT in Europe and Morocco is in Africa.

Who knew! (Everybody else but me, apparently).

And sadly that's not the only gap in my knowledge.

Ask me how to do fractions or percentages and I will look at you blankly until you awkwardly change the subject.

Actually, ask me how to do anything maths-related and I immediately revert back to that 11-year-old, trying to see the maths homework through tears as my frustrated dad yells "what is it you don't understand?!".

And parallel parking? Let's just say if a venue had only parallel parking left, I would miss the whole show.

I don't know how to use the air pumps at gas stations for my car tyres (to be fair, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to doing anything car-related).

And I couldn't tell you the rules to any sports game (don't ever ask me to play cricket, I wouldn't know where to begin).

But as I sit here roasting myself, I take solace in knowing others have knowledge gaps too.

A friend at university used to unironically pronounce chameleon as jam-a-lee-on (I never did have the heart to tell her, though I think she's cottoned on now).

My dear sister, bless her heart, thought you needed a passport to go to the South Island because it was in another country (in fairness she was younger) and her sense of direction is so lacking she'll often say she's "coming up" to visit us in Rotorua from Auckland.

My husband cannot spell to save himself, making him an easy target in Bananagrams and his lack of spatial awareness means he's often backing into me or knocking me over.

Then there are the generational knowledge gaps.

Our grandparents have a plethora of skills many younger generations just never learnt. Sewing, knowing the names of plants and where to put them (another of my knowledge gaps) cooking from scratch and just generally being self-sufficient.

Millennials may think it's ridiculous that nan can't connect the iPhone 4 she's had for 10 years to the home WiFi but here we are not knowing how to sew a button on to our shirts.

With an app to do just about everything, our knowledge gaps are only going to get larger.

You may laugh at me now for not knowing which capital cities are where but just imagine in 50 years' time when people don't know how to tie their own shoelaces because a robot does it for them.

Then who'll be the dense one!