Too mean

I'm working on a story about New Zealand identity, which has been a very interesting exercise. I am feeling more Kiwi than I do when I'm in NZ, no surprise I guess, because I feel most American when I am not here. My editors found the introductory paragraphs a bit mean, and I take their point. They have been removed from the story. But I still like them. So here they are.

***

"That's an interesting accent, darlin'. Where ya from?" asks a heavily made-up woman selling Navajo jewelry and pottery at a Santa Fe boutique. She is a riot of color, a bespectacled parrot wearing a squash blossom necklace.
"New Zealand," I answer with a tight mouth, knowing--hating--what comes next.
"Oh," she says, lazily polishing the counter on which she leans, her eyes narrowing as she mentally refers to a globe. "Where's that? Is it near Nova Scotia? No? Part of Greenland?"
"Try the Southern Hemisphere," I say, less gracious than I would like. "You know where Australia is?"
"Oh! You're that island at the bottom of Australia! The little triangle."
"No," I say, defeated, "that's Tasmania."
As my husband and I drove across the United States last autumn--from New York to San Francisco via Lisbon Falls, Maine and Tucumcari, New Mexico--we had dozens of conversations like this. They were funny at first. Then annoying. Then humiliating. Who wants to originate from a place so insubstantial as to be left off some world maps?

***

I guess I do.