Saturday 27 February 2010

Americans From Over here, part II

HIGH SCHOOL
Very early in the child's education it becomes clear who is cool and who isn't. This evolves into more specific personal traits and soon you can realize who is the loser, who is the geek and who is the bitch. And there are the weird ones as well. These precious characteristics are well nurtured untill they reach the peak in high school. The most important role of high school (okay, apart from education) is to traumatize the kids so much that they either give up or are prepared for anything that awaits them in their lives. Maybe not the "traumatizers", but even they, some time later on a shrink's couch find out that they were wrong half their life ago and are suddenly not so okay with that any more. Or, some subjects even live high school all their lives and continue their intrigues in everyday routine and (particularly!) at every reunion. College itself could seriously lack this kind of hierarchy, so fraternities were invented. And sororities, of course. You have to be cool enough to get in, besides you have to bare the humiliation of the initiation and finally you earn the right to do the same to others. Wow!


MARRIAGE
Well, an American can get married in church no matter how many times they have been divorced. Or choose a rabin for the job, whether Jewish or not. AND ... they can pay so much money for the wedding that they could easily buy a house with it. AND they can live with the fact that they have paid so much. And without that house sometimes. And marriage... well marriage is marriage...I've known all sorts of them. But when it comes to

DATING
... that's another story. There are RULES. About asking someone out. Not asking them out. Calling, not calling. Calling ... when? The dates are numbered and certain things can be done on the first date, others on the second, and so on. I'll call you - this was a lie even before he said it. How do you know how important the date is to her? How much time has she spent making herself prettier and how far up has she shaved her legs - that says everything.

And meeting people? Just go to a bar and you'll get somebody's phone number. With the right approach, of course. Maybe a good pick-up line. I got some of those in my mailbox years ago, not sure why: Your last name must be Gillette - you're te best that can happen to a man. Does any woman actually fall for that? Or: Did the sun just come out or did you smile at me? Should any of this indicate that this man is charming, witty and intelligent?

Not to mention blind dating. My boyfriend's best friend is such a nice guy why don't we go on a double date? Hallo? And the best is yet to come: Is he tall? What does he do? Is he handsome? asks the same woman that insisted she was by no means shallow only a few minutes ago.

Besides, who can honestly expect to meet someone for a drink or a cup of coffee or even go for a dinner with that someone - and KNOW? Know if they are meant to be together? He's trying to impress her, she's trying to impress him, they say all sorts of things they wouldn't if they weren't so nervous and some of them are obviously not true. How can you tell someone your job is actually quite different from what you said in the beginning - simply because you thought she would like your made up job better? And so on and so on... Dating is also the most regulkar topic of any converstaion among friends, as well as sex... how long has it been now? Over two months? Jeez, we must get you someone! And blind dating it is again whether you want it or not, because your friends want to help you out of such distress, not to mention frustration.

I guess about 90% of adult life revolves around mating, one way or another.

And Americans don't really break up. Sometimes they get dumped or dump the other one, true, but the tendency nowadays is to start seeing other people. Now figure that out if you can!

And when successful dating leads to a proposal, it should be loving, charming and ORIGINAL. Come on! Countless men have proposed to their ladies, what do you think you can think of to be absolutely new? Organize a dinner and a special dessert in the end on which she can break a tooth if something goes wrong? A plane in the sky with a giant flier? And risk she'll by any chance be in the bathroom when it is in the air to be seen? Or asking her on a big screen at the stadium and have her filmed while she says ... what? She said NO?

Jeez... if she loves you, just ask her... If you do it in a public place anywhere in America, you know, you will probably get a standing ovation!

BABIES
In a marriage, if everything goes well, a baby is brought into this world. The mommy to be is rushed into the hospital and all the relatives are notified that it has started. Half of them come to the hospital. One or two with a camera to film the event, even if they have to shoot some parts that are usually kept private and they would otherwise never get the chance to see. Sometimes the mommy objects to that, successfully... or not.
Or, if it's a false alarm, everybody is sent home and they take it as a drill. For the day when it really happens.

And so we get to the choosing of the name. Hey, we've been there! Let me stop here, then. Till next time.

TO BE CONTINUED

9 comments:

  1. Oh wow, that was great Minka! Did you watch the closing ceremony for the Olympics? It was a great spoof on what other countries think of Canada, but the fact is, they think that about Canada because that's what we keep putting out there for them to see, spoof or not!

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  2. I photographed weddings professionally for over 20 years. Yes, people can get pretty crazy when spending the $$$ on this sort of thing. I do love a good wedding, though. :-)

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  3. Thanks, Skye! Yes, I realize what you're saying is true. I've just watched a part of the closing ceremony (a re-run, obviously). You've just taught me a new word - spoof.

    People have different opinions, sometimes based on evperiences and sometimes not. And even if so, I don't think anyone should generalize a single experience on the whole nation.

    Olympic games are such a huge thing that cannot pass without mistakes and flaws, I guess.

    Another thing is that Canada got plenty of medals. Congratulations! But this is also an optimal greenhouse for envy. That's just how peole are.

    Besides - some good words, too, have been said about Canada these days, right?

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  4. I understand that, Teri. I, too, like a good wedding, but not bridezilla style or something. But some weddings are just not proportional to the money people actually have, don't you think? Here, too, sometimes, but really not so much.

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  5. Personally, I like to make fun of us Canucks, we're a fun loving country that (for the most part) has a great sense of humor and knows how to laugh at themselves. That's my generalization anyway!

    Thanks for the congrats, we did get our share of metals didn't we!?! I'm just surprised at how many golds we got, especially since so many of our skiers weren't able to compete due to injury! What was most surprising though was the woman (can't remember her name, sorry) who won gold with the broken ribs and punctured lung. Now that takes a little bit of dedication and a whole lot of insanity!

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  6. Her name is Petra Majdič (Č= tch in catch). She won bronze, but it was like gold, yes, with that kind of injury. Her incdent and some others are the reason why peole here wer not so pleased with how the games went. Particularly the fact that the organizers do not want to take any responsibility for anything that went wrong. I agree about the dedication and insanity. I must admit most people just saw the dedication. It's also true that the first examination showed nothing was broken (I can't understand that, either).
    As for us, we often use the small population of this country to mke it sound better, like: We won (LOL, what did I have to do with it?) 3 medals, that's 1.5 per million! (Population 2 000 000) Can you say anything like that about your country? from this point of view we do quite well in most cases.

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  7. She should have gotten the gold for that performance! Had she been in perfect health I'm sure she would have out skied everyone and gotten a speed record for it as well!

    No, I certainly can't say anything like that about here, we sure don't get medals per capita like that! Nor do most countries, so yes, you should be proud over how well your Olympians did!!

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  8. PS

    How rotten am I? I don't even know what country Petra hails from! My memory is incredible, incredibly short that is!

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  9. Naaaaahhh.... you just wrote that so that I can say now that she is Slovene, right? :) Or did you guess that from my previous comment? And that's not rotten - how could you know everything

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