36 Hours -- Other Observances in the US This Week
Things you don't think of when most of your waking hours are spent listening to a language other than your own:
1) All the politicians are talking like they are from fly-over country, i.e their 'g' endings (or would that be 'endins'?) have been stripped away. It seemed natural coming from Palin, but not from McCain, Obama, or Biden.
2) It seems like everybody in America has trouble uttering a complete sentence without having at least one, sometimes several, 'umms' or 'uhhs'. What is that all about? The Partnerin assures me I don't do that ... I hope she is, uhh, right.
3) Everyone is yakking almost constantly on a cell phone, as if they were afraid to be left alone with their own thoughts?
4) US cashiers are chatty-cathy's (or chatty-charlies) with you as they pack your goods in your no-additional-cost paper or plastic bags ... German check-out cashiers say practically nothing to you as they swipe your goods and toss them out of your reach before you can bag them in the plastic or cloth tote for which you were charged.
1) All the politicians are talking like they are from fly-over country, i.e their 'g' endings (or would that be 'endins'?) have been stripped away. It seemed natural coming from Palin, but not from McCain, Obama, or Biden.
2) It seems like everybody in America has trouble uttering a complete sentence without having at least one, sometimes several, 'umms' or 'uhhs'. What is that all about? The Partnerin assures me I don't do that ... I hope she is, uhh, right.
3) Everyone is yakking almost constantly on a cell phone, as if they were afraid to be left alone with their own thoughts?
4) US cashiers are chatty-cathy's (or chatty-charlies) with you as they pack your goods in your no-additional-cost paper or plastic bags ... German check-out cashiers say practically nothing to you as they swipe your goods and toss them out of your reach before you can bag them in the plastic or cloth tote for which you were charged.
posted by Mike B at 10/18/2008 12:11:00 AM
4 Comments:
I've noticed all these things too. And if they're not talking on the cell phone, they're texting while your trying to have a conversation with them. I don't get it either.
I had many of the same observances when I came back from 2 months in Switzerland last year. I got off the plane at Newark and wanted to get right back on.
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The US definitely has a major cell phone addiction problem. I think it makes people feel more significant/important to be on them. When it's your own friends answering some stupid call on their phone rather than talking to you when they just picked you up after 8 hours on an airplane and months in a foreign country? I don't know what the psychology is behind that.
When I was living in Boston, I had a friend visit for one day. As I was showing him around the city, he'd constantly answer his phone, which was rude enough, but to top it off, he'd walk and chat with people on the phone for 20 or 30 minutes at a time! It was so unbelievably rude that I actually left him standing at a subway stop, at one point, and got on a different train.
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