A positive story, from just east of the River, in Mississippi, around the same time:
I flew in to Memphis, and drove south about an hour. I didn’t find any liquor stores, so I crossed the river into Arkansas, where I was informed that there were no alcohol sales in Arkansas (it was a Sunday). So I glumly checked into my hotel.
There was a bar. I asked a Black gentleman who was running a shoeshine stand, “Excuse me sir, are they serving drinks today?”
His reply warmed my heart: “Oh yes SUH! This ain’t ArkanSAW, this is MissiSIPPi!”
I thanked him, and got toasted. (I also met Tanya Tucker’s sister-in-law, but that’s another story.)
As I left the bar, the gentleman greeted me, “Did you have that drink?”
I replied, “Yes sir I did, and it was so good, I had me aNOTHER!”
Harrison, less than 25 miles to the west, is the location of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is headed by national director and self-claimed pastor Thomas Robb and claims to be the largest Klan organization in America today (copied and pasted from this Wikipedia entry).
My wife and I were once invited by a Native American friend to attend a special ceremony he was participating in. It was a very traditional occasion, in a Longhouse in the middle of nowhere. No electricity. A fire pit in the middle. We felt like we had stepped back 200 years. It was dark, everyone was in traditional ceremonial dress, face paint, the whole thing. Lots of drumming, and chanting, and other things that are hard to describe. It went on all day and into the night. And at the end a giveaway and a great meal of salmon and venison.
I was only 125 miles from my home, but it was indeed a culture shock, and a marvelous one.
I was once married to a Native woman and had spent a lot of time on reservations and attending Pow Wows, weddings, funerals, etc. But I never saw anything like this event.
My mother retired here in Arkansas and my sister came to visit from Arkansas. We stopped by the grocery store and she tried to purchase three bottles of wine on a Sunday. The clerk set the bottles aside looked at my sister and said, “You’re not from here are you?”
When visiting my in-laws for the first time, I woke up for breakfast the next day, sat down, and there was a big giant steaming bowl of chocolate pudding sitting on the table next to the biscuits. When I made a few delicate inquiries about the steaming bowl of chocolate pudding I was told that was chocolate gravy and they were surprised I had never heard of such a thing. Normally I’m up for trying new things but it was too early in the morning and I just wasn’t prepared to deal with chocolate gravy so I left it alone.
Before moving to Arkansas I lived in Texas so I’m no slouch when it comes to accents. Or so I thought. I’ve lived in Arkansas for nearly twenty years now and I still have trouble with some people’s accents here. And my wife, a native Arkansan, has had her accent thickened since we moved back here and spent so much time amongst her people. I was working at the library when someone came in for a book on Bayou Meadow. I searched long and hard for books about Bayou Meadow but still couldn’t find anything and this woman was getting more and more agitated the longer it took me to find this book until she gave up and unhappily left. A few days later I found out she was looking for books on Bayou Meto (which the natives pronounce as meadow) a small community in Arkansas County.
A few years ago at Walmart I tried using a gift card and there was a language barrier that hampered my efforts to pay. When I handed my gift card to the cashier the following exchange took place.
Cashier: Reloooo!
Me: Pardon me, what?
Cashier: Reloooo?
Me to wife: Do you understand what she’s saying?
Cashier: Do you want to reload your card?
Me: What do you mean reload?
Cashier: Do you want to add money to your gift card?
Me: No, thank you. I just want to use it to pay for these items.
A conversation I had with a fellow university student.
Classmate: Have you been to New York?
Me: I haven’t, but I’d like to visit one day.
Classmate: They have coffee Skittles in New York.
Me: I didn’t know they made coffee Skittles.
Classmate: No, coffee Skittles!
Me: Are you saying Skittles?
Classmate: Coffee skills they have coffee skills. You can get a good cup of coffee there.
My culture shock, in so many ways, came when I went to college.
I was amazed at the “protest of the week” culture in the college town. For some of these people, it was like attending the high school football game every weekend. And would have just as much effect in the long run.
And then there were the extreme, um call them socially maladjusted people. The ones who would get drunk and bellow out a song in the wee hours of the weekend. The ones who bragged about never studying and how much they could fool their professors.
This college town had a large amount of students from foreign countries. I wouldn’t be surprised if they still regale their families with stories about those “stupid Americans”.
What’s the big city version of this? People with the world’s loudest sound systems that shake your home windows when they drive past? I deal with that shit multiple times a week.
Same here. I live in urban New Jersey, a hundred feet from a stop light. My days are punctuated by the boom cars going by. That can’t possibly be doing their hearing any good.
We bought a house in rural NJ near the PA border to get away from the City / so my wife can be near her elderly parents. It’s not completely “shocking” as we’ve been visiting her parents for years, obviously.
My wife and I had lived in major cities our entire life. This is way more rural than anything I’ve ever experienced.
On the positive, it’s nice having a big house with a pool and a big yard so our kids can play. It’s kind of cool seeing deer, rabbits, groundhogs, bears, preying mantis, whatever the hell that thing was in our yard all the time. And our neighbors seem nice.
But there is jack-squat to do. And a lot of the people are super-conservative and kind of stupid. Not stupid in an SDMB “I hate Republicans” sort of way (although many are that too). A lot of them are just dumb and uneducated and loudly say dumb and uneducated things.
Plus culturally, having my wife’s parents and aunts on her mom’s side (all who have also lived in the town for 70+ years) so close and constantly in our business has just brought a shitty energy to my life. They are the sort of people who rarely venture beyond 20 miles of home, and they rarely take advantage of what stuff there is to do within those 20 miles.
I have a hard time understanding this thread, as I don’t really understand culture shock.
I’ve lived in Idaho, New Mexico, Florida, now Netherlands, and I’ve visited many other places and countries, and I’ve never gotten culture shock. People-in-general have always seemed weird and frustrating to me, and people in different places just seem weird in (very) slightly different ways. I mean, I’ve so far only visited western countries and so every place I’ve visited has had far more in common then different. (similar political structure, existence of cities, streets, running water, electricity, at least rudimentary use of English… etc…). In addition I’ve always done a little research on a place before I move there, so I am never surprised by the political climate, weather, living styles, whatever.
I guess what I’m trying to do is ask how are you getting culture shock? Do you not do any research about where you are going? For example, many above have talked about being shocked about Idaho. Idaho is well known in the US for being radically conservative (I constantly heard jokes about it when I lived in New Mexico, for example). So how can you be surprised by this?
We ran into this in the rural Midwest. They weren’t sure what quakers were, but they were pretty sure we needed saving. “Do you have score cards you have to turn in on Sunday?” That wasn’t well-received.
I think the term “church home” was used.
Moving to El Paso was obviously a big change, but somehow felt less weird than the Midwest.
Which, supposedly, was some marketing gimmick. Quakers being associated with all manner of good things back in the 1870s, as opposed to being deeply sus in 90s Kankakee.
I moved from my very small rural mid-west town to Los Angeles, CA, in 1981. For me, it was the right fit.
Some of the small subtle things I noticed were:
As others have mentioned about the mid-west, the people there are authentically friendly, but I always thought that they were also just a little wary of strangers. The friendliness is not overt. Whereas in LA, I found people to be much more energetically friendly. I saw it as the difference between big city personality vs. small town reserve. But very soon I also picked up that the LA friendliness was more fake, performative rather than genuine.
Even though I knew myself to be unconventional, and not really fitting in, in my small home town, I was also steeped in the upbringing which had a judgemental moralistic streak (small town = small minds). Getting to LA, I often felt that what was forbidden at home was celebrated in LA, or even required. I know part of that was big city, part LA in particular. So, I had to adjust my gauge on that.
I moved from rural Ohio (local majority is Mennonite) to Los Angeles about the turn of the millennium. Definitely some culture shock.
I see the main difference is how busy people are. L.A. is all drive here, do this, drive there, do that. People are defined by what they do more than who they are. Rural Ohio is more about who you are: where you grew up, what school, what church.
I find the overall friendliness about the same and more about how out-going the individuals are. If you’re doing similar activity, I find it easy to start up conversations with others in L.A. It’s just that there’s so much moving about that there’s not as much personal contact time as rural Ohio.
Case in point. In rural Ohio, going to the next town over (maybe five miles or ten minutes) is considered a hardship. In L.A., five miles is practically next door. It’s travel time that matters, which is varies tremendously based on location and time of day and week. Once you’re at someplace people are mostly just as friendly. But maybe that’s just my Ohio upbringing leaking out.
The race and ethnicity distribution of rural Ohio vs L.A. is completely different. People of color are rare in rural Ohio. In L.A., everyone is a minority. Being married to a person of color, I’m much more comfortable in L.A. No one gives my family a second look. When back home in Ohio, I can feel the eyes–it feels odd even if no harm is intended.
While L.A. is multicultural, there is still some tribalism. Once we went to a school fundraiser. We were assigned seats at a table with four other couples. Two couples were Mexican Americans, the other two were Armenian Americans. We all chatted for a bit, then got up to go to the buffet. When we seated again, one of the other moms asked “are you Armenian or Mexican?” It turns out the Mexicans thought we were Armenian and the Armenians thought we were Mexican. It didn’t matter, but they wanted to know.
We do go to a small Korean-language church in L.A., which is functionally similar to the small church I grew up in in Ohio. I stick out as a “foreigner” there; however, just like in Ohio, once you’re adopted into a community you’re a part of it.
You can research all you want, but the knowledge in your head still doesn’t prepare you fully for incidents and events that happen when in a different cultural environment.
For example, a couple of incidents I witnessed. My husband grew up in NYC burbs and knew how pushy Manhattan drivers were, but that didn’t prevent him from feeling culture shock when he was slowly backing into a Manhattan parking spot and a pushy driver in a little car stole the spot by doing a quick front park. He also knew that southern drivers can be more laid back and courteous, but he still felt culture shock when he visited Virginia and had drivers waving him ahead at stop signs instead of pushing ahead and insisting it was “their turn”.
I get a bit of culture shock going to the nearest big city to me – about 100 miles. When driving in the city, I regularly wave people ahead of me. For example, driving up to a stop light and someone wants out of a parking lot just before the light, I’ll generally stop and wave them ahead of me.
The biggest difference, though, is parking. At my office, there is generally enough space between vehicles that you could park at least a motorcycle or two in the space and often it would be easy to park a golf cart between two vehicles. In the city, there often isn’t enough room between cars to get in and out of the cars.
Fortunately, I don’t need to go to the big city often.
I visited Quebec as a teenager on a school trip in 1990 and noticed something similar; not sure if that’s as far back as you mean but it’s still been multiple decades. Our teacher/chaperone (who was from Quebec) took us out to a night club… there were actual night clubs for kids that played the loud music and all the usual stuff but didn’t seem to serve alcohol. They did feature full-sized muscle-head bouncers at the doors though, and all the kids smoked. I watched the staff sell 13-year-olds individual cigarettes from the bar area. Our other Quebecoise teacher confirmed that yes, when she was young she hung out in clubs like this every night of the week. Such places didn’t even exist in my Province.
Years later as an adult I met a very attractive girl who’d come straight from Quebec to my province. I tried for 2-3 weeks to ask her out on dates; she always agreed to go meet somewhere but seemed to just be in casual hang-out mode every time. When I finally got through to her that I wanted to do more than just talk about the weather or throw a frisbee around she was almost shocked. Not at the idea (that was fine), but by how non-obvious my asking was. Apparently in her part of Quebec the men tend to be much more blatant and pig-ish towards women; this girl had grown accustomed to public cat-calling and groping as normal behavior, and anything less meant a male wasn’t interested. She was genuinely confused why I had never pinned her against a wall and told her all the nasty things I wanted to do to her.
I lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts until the age of 10, a small city where less than half of the residents are white. We then moved to southern New Hampshire the week that I started 5th grade.
I walked into my 5th grade classroom and I was surprised to see that everyone in my class was white. Weird, but I guessed that it could happen. And then we went to lunch and recess…I soon discovered that there were only 3 black kids and 1 Asian kid in the whole school. And every single kid spoke English, only English.
Even at 10 years old I found this took some adjusting to.
