A test to determine: ARE YOU LIVING IN A FIRST WORLD COUNTRY?

Here are ten questions for you:

Yes or No? You live in a place where people pay millions for a piece of cardboard measuring 2x1.5 inches.

Example: An Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $ 2.8 million at auction.

Yes or No? You have to choose between a latte and a T-shirt.

Example: Headline in the Globe & Mail, 30 April, “Shouldn’t a T-shirt cost more than a latte?”

Yes or No? You build an edifice as a concrete reminder of your existence (and pay for it out of your own pocket).

As opposed to dictators and ex-presidents who use other people’s money. See jargondatabase.com for “edifice complex”.

Yes or No? You commit sociology or search for root causes.

Example: Stephen Harper tut-tutting about Justin Trudeau’s attempt to analyze the Boston bombing.

Yes or No? You are a female journalist visiting the change room of male athletes.

And no one objects except Canada’s “National Daft Old Uncle”, Don Cherry.  

Yes or No? You write an autobiography that makes you look bad.

Example: Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska. Does this spell the end of triumphant/redemptive/inspirational autobiographies as we know them?

Yes or No? You ask yourself: How high is too high for a high-waisted skirt?

For an answer go to fashion expert Amy Verner, Globe & Mail, 4 May.

Yes or No? You need to go back to 1812 for a war fought in your country.

Example: Bicentennial celebrations in Canada, 2012.

Yes or No? You jog to keep in shape.

Unlike the women who keep in shape by walking three miles to collect water and three miles back, carrying it home in a jerry can.

Yes or No? You pay for your child to reconnect with nature.

And we aren’t talking summer camp here. We are talking “forest bathing”-- the benefits of which Japan has researched at the cost of $ 4 Million (Globe & Mail, 3 May).

Just asking.