Living in America

Most of the time I have no sense of living in a foreign country when I spend time in the US. From my earliest years I had relatives who lived and worked in the United States.

There’s the obsession with guns that I will never understand and the number of people associated with the military but otherwise we speak the same language if one discounts the colloquialisms such as you’all and that Texas Drawl.

Today however I ran into a wall. When I went to pick up some more of my preferred Anti-Histamine three pharmacists declared they’d never heard of it. Suppose I should have kept the box my drug came in but the thought that it would bear a different name on this side of the border never occurred to me. The scientific drug name occupies an entire line on the page.

In the grocery store I commented that the grapefruit didn’t indicate whether they were red or white. A fellow shopper informed me that no one buys white grapefruit in Texas so they have to be red. Who knew? Bilingual labels here are in Spanish and English. It’s taken me three years to figure out that table cream as I understand it is light whipping cream here in the south.

Guess I’ll have to add it to my list of things I find unique. Like being served French Fries without vinegar, or sweet potato fries with cinnamon. Or the fact that as you head south sweet potatoes get cheaper than potatoes. Iced tea is served sweetened on ice in a tall glass and gets topped up regularly. Tea as I’d know it is a rare commodity. A pint of beer is 16 ounces.

Narrow streets that don’t have to accommodate snow plows and their banks. And roads that hump. I hope the roads enjoy the foreplay, I certainly don’t appreciate the speed bumps.

And then there’s the wind warnings for a 30 mile-an-hour breeze. What would they call a 60 mph gale--a national emergency?

Whether it’s a relaxed sense of time or lack of consideration for others I find it insulting when people show up late, do they consider other’s time so unimportant that they can waste it so casually. There also seems to be a lack of commitment in particular as regards planning for the future, when I tell a friend that I’ll be arriving at such and such a time 4 months hence they express surprise when I actually show up on time. Conversely they seem surprised when they invite me to something at the spur of the moment that I might actually have made other plans.