For many years we had subscriptions to the National Geographic magazine, whose pictures alone took us to far away places that we had to find on the globe. Often when we found an unfamiliar country name on the globe we would turn to the encyclopedia to learn more about it. Brad was particularly fascinated with far-off places and the trivia associated with them. Because he was the champion of all things geographic, he initiated the on-going globe competition designed to stump his siblings. The idea was to challenge someone to find a country on the globe, which was rather detailed with tiny print. Brad prided himself in finding the tiniest and most remote places to challenge his opponent. The rest of us tried to turn the tables on him by giving him exotic places to locate, but he always seemed to rise to the occasion. I remember once that Brad challenged someone—I think it was David—to find a country that none of us had ever heard of before. We looked for hours it seemed then cheated by consulting the encyclopedia, just to discover that it wasn’t listed even there. When confronted with this fact Brad was pleased to tell us that the African country had just recently experienced a coup, and that its named had been changed, but since the borders had not been altered the country was technically there on the globe, so he had won the competition.
