Uniquely Distinct Americanisms

[sinjin]

Ok and now for my “Americanisms”. Feel free to correct or disagree

1. Eating, drinking, and now talking on the phone while driving. I can’t imagine driving without a cup of coffee or a bottle of water. In addition I have seen other drivers; shaving, applying makeup (mascara) and reading newspapers and books while going 70mph on the highway. Thankfully not all at the same time.

2. Televangelists. Is anybody else in the known universe beset by these people? And why oh why do people continue to send them money?

3. Our whole car based life. Start driving at 14 or 15 depending on the state. Get your liscence (sp??) and a car on your 16th birthday and then drive as much as possible. Do kids in other cultures cruise? Go on road trips? Experience sex for the first time in the back seat? Do you have drive thru atm’s, banks, bakeries, food joints, booze joints, marriage chapels? How about drive in movies? These are making a come back in the midwest. When I was a kid the local drive-in had portable electric heaters to put in your car window so you could go to the drive-in during the winter.

4. And yes we are geography impared. I have a PhD but don’t know where anything is unless I’ve been there. I didn’t realize that there were states east of New York until I was 26 years old and moved there. The schools I went to did not teach geography. To this day I would not be able to tell Iraq from Iran on a map. Sad but true.

[boofy_bloke]

Is it true that in the USA, it is unconstitutional to require people to wear seatbelts in their cars and helmets on their motorbikes?

I’m an American and it’s my right to die a horrible death or have an horrendous accident, costing the healthcare system thousands of dollars…

Oh, has anyone said that, beginning sentences with “I’m an American and…”? I’ve heard Born Again Christians go “I’m a Christian and…” but not other nationalities.

[amarone]

@boofy_bloke

Is it true that in the USA, it is unconstitutional to require people to wear seatbelts in their cars and helmets on their motorbikes?

Nope - New Hampshire is the only state not to have seatbelt laws. Most states have some form of helmet laws.

I’m an American and it’s my right to die a horrible death or have an horrendous accident, costing the healthcare system thousands of dollars…

What is this “healthcare system” of which you speak?

[ruadh]

boofy_bloke, I can’t decide whether your posts to this thread are (a) evidence of an absolutely stunningly inaccurate perception of America and Americans, or (b) something a bit more sinister than that.

[smiling_bandit]

4. And yes we are geography impared. I have a PhD but don’t know where anything is unless I’ve been there. I didn’t realize that there were states east of New York until I was 26 years old and moved there. The schools I went to did not teach geography. To this day I would not be able to tell Iraq from Iran on a map. Sad but true.

Are you serious?

Everyone in my generation (around 20 now, between X and Y, so I guess we are nameless) must be different, cause we all seem to know these things.

[Erasticity]

@Verick

Violence, blood, guts, gore, but no boobies:
Puritanism strikes again, and of course, we have to vent our sexual frustration somehow. Yes that was a joke, but only slightly. I think violence is accepted because we are a country founded on such, and of course nudity is evil in God’s eyes, so we can’t have any of that.

AMEN (AWOMEN?)
I was sitting in the theater when “Starship Troopers” first came out. There was a woman in her late 20’s - early 30’s with two small daughters approx. 3 & 5 YOA. During the brutally violent bloody scenes she ridiculed the girls for hiding their eyes…and then (wait for it…) during the SHOWER SCENE (note, had absolutely nothing to do with sex) the woman covered the childrens eyes and told them that was bad.
I was completely flabergasted! what is a normal human more likely to see in their lifetime (hopefully):

1. a pair of Hooters?
2. other humans being disemboweled / dismembered / blown to itty bitty pieces?

AMERICANS
(and I’m one of them!) :eek:

[Satyagrahi]

Wow! I made it to the end of this thread and no one has already stated the two items I want to add.

My wife immigrated here to the U.S. from Greece just 2 and a half years ago and was surprised by many things. Sales tax, competing legal jurisdictions of city, county, state, federal government, and several other things which have been mentioned here. But the two items that absolutely shocked her were these:

First, the high percentage of people who live in rental units and move frequently following jobs or convenience or just out of boredom. In Greece and apparently much of Europe, the great majority of people own their homes even if it’s just a flat (what we would call a “condo”) in a shabby building. Owning their homes, families move very rarely and tend, instead, to bring up generations of families in the same home. The American practice made her feel that we were “rootless,” “lacking real security,” and highly mobile for no good reason.

Second, she was totally astonished by the American attitude toward employment. An American will jump up and change jobs just to get a 5% raise. If your resume (‘CV’ for you European types) shows an average of 5 years on a job, you’re considered exceptional, highly stable, perhaps even stodgy. Further, scratch an American and you’ll find a yearning to start his own business with a chance of either going broke or getting rich. In Greece and, I think, much of Europe, it’s expected that you will find a job when 20 and stay with it until you retire. What Americans would call “the entrepreneurial spirit,” she calls madness.

The “hustle” that many Americans put into trying to get rich is not unique, of course, but I think it’s more widespread here than in most countries. This has had some very negative effects (For instance, the near-genocide of the Native Americans for the purpose of grabbing their land.) but it has also led to the vast amounts of infrastructure we currently depend on.

And besides, maybe someday, I’ll be rich.

[Walloon]

@Satyagrahi

In Greece and apparently much of Europe, the great majority of people own their homes even if it’s just a flat (what we would call a “condo”) in a shabby building.

So do the great majority of Americans, more than two thirds. To be specific, in 2002, 67.9% of American homes were owner occupied. Among American natives, the rate of home ownership in 2002 was 70.3%.

The European Union average homeownership rate is identical to America’s: around two-thirds of all households. In Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy, the percentage share is in the high 70s and low 80s. The UK is around the EU average. In contrast, France has only 55% and Germany a mere 43%.

[Satyagrahi]

@Walloon

So do the great majority of Americans, more than two thirds. To be specific, in 2002, 67.9% of American homes were owner occupied. Among American natives, the rate of home ownership in 2002 was 70.3%.

Does that statistic mean that 2/3 of single-dwelling homes are occupied by the owners or that 2/3 of the population of the U.S. own their homes? Considering the vast number of rental apartments in cities, I would be astonished if the latter were true. Could you clarify this and perhaps offer a cite for the American statistic?

And may I add, as another issue, that in Greece, at least, a house mortgage through a bank is almost unheard of. From a Greek viewpoint, most American homes are not owned by the residents thereof; they’re owned by the bank.

[Walloon]

@Satyagrahi

Does that statistic mean that 2/3 of single-dwelling homes are occupied by the owners or that 2/3 of the population of the U.S. own their homes? Considering the vast number of rental apartments in cities, I would be astonished if the latter were true. Could you clarify this and perhaps offer a cite for the American statistic?

Two-thirds of the households in the United States, whether single family detached homes or units in a multi-unit building, are occupied by their owners.

Homeownership among all U.S. households rose from 64.0 percent in 1994 to 67.9 percent in 2002. For natives, the homeownership rate rose substantially
over the period, from 65.7 percent in 1994 to 70.3 percent in 2002.

Source: Moving to America — Moving to Homeownership: 1994-2002. U.S. Census Bureau, September 2003.

[sinjin]

Smiling bandit:

Unfortunately it’s true. My story may be somewhat isolated but I know others in the same boat. I went to a small Catholic school grades 1-8 and looking back wonder at the teaching quality; I got a D in math in the 5th grade because I stacked my books in the order of my classes rather by size, largest to smallest :eek: During those eight years the only geography I had was in the fourth grade. We didn’t even have to memorize the states or state capitals (and I still probably couldn’t name them all).

I then went to a large public high school (in the '70’s) when everthing was about personal choice. I took the equivelent of 5 years of math, 5 years of science, 4 years of Russian, 1 year of English, 1/2 year of social studies, no history, and no geography. The only graduation requirement I recall was 4 years of gym.

After that was engineering school, with again, basically no humanities. So here I am finally trying to do history and geography on my own. I have a 9’X15’ map of the world on my office wall and smaller maps around the house so when I’m trying to figure out where places are I don’t have to go too far.

My latest passion is history. Which I find amazingly interesting at this late date.

[boofy_bloke]

@ruadh

boofy_bloke, I can’t decide whether your posts to this thread are (a) evidence of an absolutely stunningly inaccurate perception of America and Americans, or (b) something a bit more sinister than that.

Go with absolutely stunningly inaccurate. I couldn’t (b) if I tried.

¡Everything I know about the USA I learned from Hollywood!

[MadScientistMatt]

@UselessGit

Guns - What’s the deal with that? Why on earth would anyone want to have a handgun in his home - or any other guns for that matter - unless he is a hunter or Rambo?

Actually, a fairly sizable number of American men are hunters - which may in and of itself be one way Americans are different from people in many other countries.

[Mehitabel]

One cool thing about being an American is that if you say something that shows that you have the remotest grasp of anything pertinent outside the U.S., you’re regarded as a blazing genius. For example, I was training an Icelandic-American gal to take over some of the tasks in a temp job I was leaving, and she mentioned her last name was Jonsson. I remarked that I had thought it would properly be Jonssondottir, and she looked at me with the astonishment somebody would have for a three-year-old who could recite the Gettysburg Address. She was thrilled that I’d even heard of Iceland at all. We got along great.

Never been abroad (in my economic class, Going to Europe is a huge, once-or-twice in a lifetime experience) but I’d love to go. I have a suspicion that this “openness to nudity” means “We don’t mind exploiting the nekkid bodies of pretty young ladies in advertisements” rather than a real openness like among the Bushmen or something I also find the casual acceptance of abortion pretty unnerving, as well as the lack of concern for teen drinking and the immigrant ghettos that you can’t seem to “move on up” out of. I’d like to see what it’s really like, how permissive it really is. I would guess there’s just a different set of restrictions.

Finally, I’m always amused at the misunderstanding about the United STATES. I’ve lived two halves of my life in two of the most populated states–New York and Massachusetts. Only one has the death penalty (and NY has seven people on death row and hasn’t fried one of them yet, and several county attorneys, like mine in da Bronx, refuse to ask for it); both have very restrictive gun laws and New York is now the safest large city in America; I never hear or see fundamentalist preachers aside from liquored-up ranters on the subway; the people I know who voted for Bush get along perfectly nicely with those who didn’t; most of the people I know are not fat and few own SUV’s; and the kindness and solidarity we shared after 9/11 has not entirely faded.

America is really thousands of microcultures. Each is treasured/praised/mocked/emulated/envied by the other, and most people live in several of them that overlap and vary in importance over the course of a lifetime. I guess the main thing is that ideas matter more than in Europe, where a certain weary cynicism and hedonism seem to be prevalent. The fights we have, over gay rights and abortion and guns and prayer in schools, are IMO, overplayed in the foreign press and also here, because they’re more fun to argue about than the deficit.

[Walloon]

@PictsiePat

I got a D in math in the 5th grade because I stacked my books in the order of my classes rather by size, largest to smallest

Please explain that non-sequitor.

[porkchop_d_clown]

@Mehitabel

America is really thousands of microcultures. Each is treasured/praised/mocked/emulated/envied by the other(s), and most people live in several of them that overlap and vary in importance over the course of a lifetime.

That’s probably the most accurate post in this whole thread. Well said.

[everton]

@Mehitabel

One cool thing about being an American is that if you say something that shows that you have the remotest grasp of anything pertinent outside the U.S., you’re regarded as a blazing genius. For example, I was training an Icelandic-American gal to take over some of the tasks in a temp job I was leaving, and she mentioned her last name was Jonsson. I remarked that I had thought it would properly be Jonssondottir, and she looked at me with the astonishment somebody would have for a three-year-old who could recite the Gettysburg Address. She was thrilled that I’d even heard of Iceland at all. We got along great.

That’s not particularly American – the same thing happens in many places. Unfortunatley, many people are ignorant about other cultures, and people from small countries like Iceland are often pleasantly surprised to discover any rare fragment of familiarity when they travel abroad. I could quote you numerous first-hand examples. Americans are often assumed to be abnormally ignorant about the rest of the world, but there’s very little evidence to back that up.

Never been abroad (in my economic class, Going to Europe is a huge, once-or-twice in a lifetime experience) but I’d love to go. I have a suspicion that this “openness to nudity” means “We don’t mind exploiting the nekkid bodies of pretty young ladies in advertisements” rather than a real openness like among the Bushmen or something I also find the casual acceptance of abortion pretty unnerving, as well as the lack of concern for teen drinking and the immigrant ghettos that you can’t seem to “move on up” out of. I’d like to see what it’s really like, how permissive it really is. I would guess there’s just a different set of restrictions.

It’s true that people’s attitute to nudity varies from country to country and from individual to individual. Sometimes it is just crass commercialism, but not always. There are many beaches/parks in European countries where people don’t wear clothes and it’s really do big deal at all. You’ll need to clarify your remarks about teen drinking and ghettos.

I guess the main thing is that ideas matter more than in Europe, where a certain weary cynicism and hedonism seem to be prevalent.

Please suck that garbage back where it came from. Ideas are important everywhere.

[boofy_bloke]

Naming your kid Randy. “Hello there, I’m highly focused on sexual activity!”

[porkchop_d_clown]

@everton

Please suck that garbage back where it came from. Ideas are important everywhere.

Well, it’s good to know you’re just a judgemental SOB who attacks everyone. Here you had me thinking there was something the matter with me.

[porkchop_d_clown]

@boofy_bloke

Naming your kid Randy. “Hello there, I’m highly focused on sexual activity!”

LoL. The one “Randy” I know - well, let’s just say the name fits.