BRITISH IN AMERICA: GOING NATIVE
Compiled by Andrew Crane
IF YOU ARE A BRIT IN THE USA, YOU MIGHT BE GOING NATIVE IF....
- You've stopped walking to the right side of the car only to find that the steering wheel is on the left.
- You have started Americanising the pronunciation of your Rs in order to get understood on the phone.
- You are beginning to tire of telling everyone your life story and how you came to move to the US.
- Writing the month before the day no longer seems weird and unnatural.
- You have stopped subscribing to UK newspapers.
- You no longer listen to the BBC on that Radio Shack short-wave radio you bought just after you arrived.
- You no longer care that there is a store 30 miles away that stocks Marmite.
- You call shops "stores".
- You are beginning to understand baseball and even watch a few games on TV.
- You find you no longer stare goggle eyed at the gorgeous, well dressed US women and wonder if they look great because Marks & Spencer aren't here.
- You have started taking for granted the huge stores and overwhelming choice.
- You have put on weight since you arrived.
- You have stopped playing with the garage door opener.
- You've grown used to your driveway being wide enough for two way traffic. with a turning lane in the centre
- You can no longer remember the name of the UK Prime Minister.
- During visits to the UK to see friends & family you secretly & guiltily start counting the days until the flight back.
- You call petrol gas.
- People have stopped asking you if you are from Australia.
- You get annoyed when a store closes before 9pm.
- You need an extra wallet for your credit cards.
- You can't imagine ever buying less than a full tank of gas.
- You go to the movies instead of the flicks (or cinema to the youngsters) which is, of course, in a theatre.
- You talk about taking the elevator instead of the lift.
- You keep the a/c on all the time. Who cares about the expense?
- You chomp ice (is this a Texan thing or more widespread?)
- You tip at every possible opportunity.
- You expect them pack your shopping at the supermarket. And carry it to the car.
- You know how to use all the phone features.
- You no longer wait for waitresses to tell you all the options, but just rhyme off what you want so you won't waste time.
- You consider it perfectly normal to accelerate from a stop position to 65 mph to enter a freeway between two huge trucks.
- You send everything Federal Express instead of via U.S. Mail.
- You throw out the junk mail, unopened.
- You stop asking for rubbers when you want an eraser..
- You wear a sweat-shirt with B.U.M. Equipment written across it...
- You pronounce aluminium as aluminum..
- You start to pronounce the W's and H's in place names...Warwick...Birmingham etc..
- You stop watching Benny Hill just to hear a British accent....
- You avoid British tourists.... I live in Vegas..!!!
- You greet people with.... Hey..!! How ya dooin..!!!! Or..... Hey... How's it goin..???
- You find yourself saying... "you becha..!!" instead of "yes"
- You stop telling people you'll knock them up in the morning
- You always ask for 7UP (lemonade never enters your head)
- You hide from your North American family the English chocolate that's been sent from the UK, because well they won't appreciate like you do. Throw 'em a Hershey Bar.
- You take water pressure for granted you no longer have to jump around in the shower to get wet you even get to wet, wash and rinse your hair before the water goes cold.
- You can casually hold a conversation whilst standing at a urinal.
- You don't mind the 1/2 inch gaps around the cubicle doors. Don't know about the cubicles with 3 foot wall and no door though.
- You talk to complete strangers in the elevator.
- You order a sandwich straight off and completely without having to answer or be surprised by the subsequent interrogation.
- You use a spill proof mug in the car.
- You've forgotten how to use a knife, and which hand it is held in.
- You have started using a middle initial.
- You have committed your social security number to memory.
- You no longer think anything of the fact your refrigerator is the same size as a single bedroom in the UK.
- You look left then right when crossing the road.
- You call a bumbag a fannypack.
- You have stopped trying to bum a fag off a friend.
- You go back home & can't understand why somebody doesn't put all your groceries (shopping) in a sac(bag) after they have asked if you want paper or plastic.
- You talk routinely of taking a sack/brown bag lunch to the office.
- You think that a car loan is as necessary for the next 30 years as a mortgage
- When I took my wife on her first UK visit I had to constantly remind her: "You're in England now. You can have anything you like... Except what you want."...
- When you go back to the UK and don't ask permission to use the phone for local calls, you wonder why everyone gets mad (er...angry) when you stay on for 20 minutes.
- You're in Birmingham. It's 10:30 a.m. You wonder why everyone thinks you're crazy for suggesting driving to London for lunch. You do it anyway.
- You manage to live through minus 40 Montreal winters, but complain of cold in UK houses. Mutter about "insulation" and "central heating" as you wonder why everyone is wearing HORRIBLE looking quilted jackets. They mutter about how "soft" you've become.
- You wonder what a "bin liner" is.
- It strikes you forcibly that Brit. pop stars sound American when they sing, but not when they speak.
- You order a Martini and then have to ask them to add gin.
- You're a smoker, and can't understand why you have to pay for matches.
- You wonder why you have to ask them to refill your coffee and then find to your horror you're expected to pay for it.
- You laugh uproariously at bottles of Britvic orange juice.
- You say things like: "THIS is a supermarket?"
- You liked London better when it didn't have McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Baskin-Robbins, etc.
- You wince every time someone says "At the end of the day..." or "Whilst..." (and others too numerous to remember).
- You use the construction: "Do you have?" not "Have you got?" (The answer is no anyway)
- A trend that started a year ago in California reached the East coast six months ago and is now DEAD. Six months later you're in London. It's just arrived and is topic A. You zone out in utter boredom as it's discussed endlessly on chat shows.
- You ask if they deliver.
- You find yourself defending the USA in futile arguments with people who may have been in Miami Beach for as long as 14 days, and know everything there is to know about America.
- You contemplate the benefits of plastic surgery. And straight, even, white teeth. And regular dry cleaning.
- You catch yourself thinking England's "quaint" or "cute."
- You cannot BELIEVE the precocity or the vocabulary of ("naice" middle class) kids.
- You mistake a roll of kitchen towels for loo paper, and wonder (again) why the Brit. version of EVERYTHING is always skimpier, thinner, smaller and more pathetic than the Yank.
- You don't remember Brit. TV as being so chaotic.
- Your name is Katy but you've given in and started to pronounce your name as "Kady" in order to be understood. (Otherwise you get called Casey!)
- You know that at the checkout, the question "Paper Or Plastic?" refers to the carrier bag rather than the payment method.
- You wait in line, rather than queue
- You spell stuff like "center"
- You know that asking for ski pants with braces will get you very weird stares.
- You buy a handgun. (And no. I haven't).
- You start to say Zee instead of Zed (although you still think Zed because it's better than Zee which sounds like "c" over the phone)
- You understand that "liberal" means "left-wing"
- Standing on the outside you can now see the long term results of a tax funded government health service when observing the hordes of impoverished beige-clad state pensioners hobbling round Sainsburys supermarket.
- You've forgotten the names of the Royal Princes, and you choose to know less Royal gossip than your colleagues.
- You go home and fish for a quid note to buy two pints of beer.
- In a UK Pub, you have to fumble with your loose unrecognisable change like a simpleton while apoligising with a perfectly good British accent.
- "Ringing your Dad" takes on a whole new meaning, as does "dragging on a fag."You go home, leave a 15% tip and then be accused of showing off.
- Your garden is ten times the size of your parent's garden but theirs looks ten times better tended.
- Your accent has softened to the point that your audience is now aware that they are being insulted instead of charmed.
- You decide that a 40 inch waist is really OK, and that 210 lb. sounds not nearly as heavy as 15 stone.
- You go home and find your use of now archaic slang received with a look of disdain, particularly as it is often bastardized with the American "r" pronunciation.
- A World Cup match is played within a 20 minute walk of your house and all you can think of is the negative effect it will have on your commute.
- You stop saying self-effacing, apologetic things like I'm sorry about that, I'm afraid that, Forgive me, I hope you don't mind, as conversational filler. (Sorry about that)
- You try to stifle the urge to say to Brit. whiners: "Stop waiting for the government to do it for you. Take responsibility for your own life." (Am I saying "On yer bike"? Gawd, Is this what it's come to? And me an old Labour Party supporter, too).
- You refuse to get drawn into UK conversations about the COST of bloody well everything. It costs what it costs. Pay it or don't. But let's not go on and on about it. Puhleeze.
- On the other hand, you learn how to haggle, bargain, deal and NEVER pay retail, even in department stores. (Try THAT anywhere in England except street markets and probably Bond Street too and see how far you get.)
- You stop making judgments about people based on what they do for a living.
- Or how they pronounce certain words. (Exception: "Nukular")
- You go in for politics and you "run" for office, instead of "standing" for election. (I always thought that was a very significant difference).
- You take it as a matter of course that all politicians, lawyers and cops are corrupt. (Tho' that's increasingly the assumption Britside too, I suspect).
- You naturalise as a US citizen.
- You have bought a Websters Dictionary and the OED is gathering dust.
- You have got used to having to search business cards for the phone number which is somewhere among the fax, pager, cellphone and email numbers.
- You expect to find today's sports section in the men's bathroom, possibly pinned up above the urinal.
- You understand that "interesting" usually means "unpleasant" or "disturbingly unusual".
- You would not dream of going out from work for a lunchtime drink (instant termination will result).
- You cannot count the number of cans of soft drink you've consumed during the past week.
- You've resorted to putting a sticker on the back of the TV remote, which lists alphabetically all the channels and their numbers.
- You've started paying for a lawn service.
- You think nothing of having two totally unused rooms in the house: the living room and the dining room.
- You've got used to the continental climate life threatening heat alternating with dangerous cold, occasionally interspersed with floods, fires and tornadoes.
- You have bought an automatic bread maker a corollary of the disgusting bread in the supermarkets.
- You have given up asking for tea in restaurants.
- You have stopped using the horn in traffic, too much ordnance out there.
- You ask for a doggy bag without even remembering the embarrassment you felt the first time you tried this alien concept.
- You defend the theory and practice of doggy bags to sneering Britsiders.
- You have given up using irony on anyone without a college education.
- You call university "school."
- You pick up a copy of Private Eye, and have NO IDEA who all the pseudonyms refer to.
- You would never say "Have a nice day" yourself, but you no longer have any kind of knee-jerk reaction when someone says it to you.
- It never occurs to you that anyone could possibly seek to define you because of which newspaper you read.
- You no longer think there's anything inherently unmanly about automatic transmission.
- You don't define yourself by which TV channel you watch the most because you tune into programmes, not stations or networks.
- The word "blimey" sounds IMPOSSIBLY peculiar.
- Your mind glazes over when an American praises the wonderful British sense of humour.
- You are occasionally rendered totally immobile by internal panic when you lose track: Chips are crisps, no, french fries are chips, no chips are cookies, er.. cookies are biscuits, er.. biscuits are hard and crunchy and sweet... er no, er .. biscuits are what you mop up your gravy with... English muffins are impossible to find in England... er the First floor is the ground floor... no... it's the second floor... the scampi is a prawn... a shrimp is a lobster tail.. a prawn is a shrimp...
- You buy an electrical appliance in England, and are flabbergasted to discover that you are now expected to go out and buy a plug, and attach it yourself.
- You have to have all your trousers... er pants... repaired after a UK visit. The weight of the change...
- You learn to use the article "the" when going to THE hospital.
- You finally quit giggling when asked to pass a napkin.You finally take the hint and quit squashing all the food together on the plate and mashing it up on the fork! Yuk!
- You drive further for lunch than your father used to take you on vacation.
- You start calling holidays vacations.
- You're surprised when someone actually tells you how they're doing when you ask.
- You're surprised when you have to pay for more than one cup of coffee or coke.
- You don't ring back your last call to ask if you'd been cut-off, because they hadn't said good-bye.
- You don't sit there for five minutes wondering what you have said wrong when someone puts the phone down without saying good-bye.
- You feel that you should go on national T.V to tell millions of people about an embarrassing problem.
- You don't feel embarrassed by embarrassing problems.
- You don't hear police sirens all night (New York).
- You don't think how the sirens sound like the movies.
- You stop asking for white coffee.
- You complain about bad service..to their face!
- You don't think that ten napkins, two plastic spoons and ten sachets of sugar in a large paper bag is too much waste for just a coffee `to go'.
- You don't wonder why the `World Series' has teams from only one country competing.
- You wonder how rugby payers can play without wearing protection.
- Your attention span for anything has shortened to one minute.
- You consider education to be a commodity acquired and paid for much like any other.
- You are no longer FASCINATED by the mouthful of metal and rubber band contraptions people put in their own and their children's mouths.
- The word "dude" passes your lips without a conscious effort.
- It no longer defies the Laws of the Universe that light switches go up to go on.
- You can't figure for the life of you why it is that an entire continent can arrange its phone numbers with a 3-digit area code and a 7-digit phone number for everyone, and to get directory assistance you actually call the area in which you need the number, but at "home" there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the phone number system in a geographical space smaller than many area codes over 'ere.
- You no longer even notice how many !$#"ing commercials there are on TV. (Or how staid they are).
- You pick up a UK tabloid and simply can't fathom how 90% of this crap is in the paper. You read it anyway.
- You pick up a UK "heavy" newspaper and simply can't fathom how 90% of THIS crap is in the paper. You read it anyway.
- You don't wait for the sun to shine to eat ice-cream.
- You go back to the UK and have to convert everything into dollars to figure out what it costs!
- You also have to explain that you're funny looking Visa really is legal...
- You take a shower at least once per day
- You have overcome the urge to wear dark socks with sandals
- You are female and no longer contemplate wearing high heels without nylons.
- You have stopped staring at the sidewalk smokers outside their office buildings (freezing or boiling according to season).
- You have caved in and bought another TV to plug into that cable outlet in the bedroom.
- You no longer sleep with the bedroom window open, messes up the carefully warmed or cooled air. (quote from my wife between chattering teeth "You English and your bloody fresh air").
- You return to your parent's house in the UK and wonder from within your layers of woollies and thermals how you ever survived your childhood.
- You now find expressways are somehow reassuring.
- When someone offers you a drink you say, "Do you have any diet 7-Up?"
- You have finally come to terms with the idea that the rabid, racist, ignorant, redneck nazi you have just met in a bar can also be a genuinely friendly and hospitable family man.
- You don't shudder nearly as much when the gas and/or electric bill arrives.
- Trunk and hood come to mind rather than boot and bonnet.
- You understand that dummy refers more to a lame brain than to something you stick in a baby's mouth.
- You have followed the US health care debate and forgotten the Dickensian reality of NHS Hospitals.
- You are growing accustomed to the awful US comedy shows (what do their writers do after the age of seven?), but realise that the appointment of the lamented Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General was categoric proof that there is a richly chaotic sense of humour alive and well in the White House.
- You have stopped thinking how many British families would be grateful for a house the size of one of your closets.
- You have forgotten what a wardrobe is.
- You have grown used to the smell of take-out food permeating the office elevators that are used to ferry vast quantities of the stuff in at all hours of the working day.
- You would rather go hungry than be forced to park the car more than 5 spaces from the supermarket entrance.
- You first reaction to the news that someone is a doctor is not that he is a selfless healer, but that he is a money-grubbing overpaid shyster out to gouge you. (Notice I said "he." Somehow women MDs don't seem to get this as much)
- You only use the word "brilliant" to describe shiny objects, or intelligent people.
- You no longer feel like a complete prat when putting your hand over your heart during The Star Spangled Banner.
- You actually try and sing the Star Spangled Banner.
- You order grits for breakfast and enjoy eating them. (Still can't get used to the bacon though)
- You regard the few restrictions on purchasing a gun as outrageous impediments to full enjoyment of your constitutional rights.
- You don't bat an eye at the request for ice in a glass of wine (red or white).
- The first section you turn to in the Sunday Paper is the funnies.
- You overhear "British" being spoken, and can tell they're only here on a visit. Contrary to your behaviour just after you arrived, you do nothing to draw attention to yourself as having anything in common with them.
- You are no longer deferential to or intimidated by, any salesperson, no matter how snooty. (Especially if it's a snooty Brit. salesperson in an exclusive New York shop.)
- You are no longer deferential. Period.
- You say "Period."
- You see someone impeccably turned out in a new Burberry raincoat, a well-pressed Savile Row suit, a crisp, starched Jermyn Street shirt, polished handbuilt shoes. You say to yourself: "Look. There goes an American."
- You flinch when you hear American buzzwords mispronounced on British radio shows.
- You may be a racist. But you stopped being a racialist a long time ago. (Ahh... but are you a sexist or a sexualist?)
- You flinch when you hear American place names mispronounced by Brits (e.g. Mitchigan, Mareeland, Hooston)
- You overhear "British" being spoken and you can no longer figure out within five miles as to where they're from.
- You find it impossible to believe you ever received mail addressed to "(First Name, Last Name) Esq." (Apparently, Brits who stay in US hotels often fail to get their mail from other Brits, because the desk clerk looks them up in the computer, and finds nobody checked in under the name "Esq."
- You now realize there is no such thing as "an" American accent. Furthermore, most American accents are quite pleasant to you, you find them harmonious if not outright melodious, while you now find many British accents to be quite jarring.
- You now believe a Robin is a rather large bird
- From New Orleans:-
- You are really in trouble when Y'All sounds like a perfectly reasonable form of address.
- You eat lots of raw oysters, have crawfish "berls" in the yard and eat the result off of newspapers.
- You buy HUGE bottles of gin.
- You go "home" you get the feeling that you are being ripped off all the time.
- You use cinnamon flavoured dental floss
- You use any kind of flavoured dental floss
- You use dental floss
- Your kids love going to their paediatric dentist whose practice is filled with toys, video arcade games etc.
- Your car has one of those radar absorbent "bras" on the front.
- You think you are pushing the thrills envelope by driving at 75mph.
- You think 130kph is the cruising speed of one of those Concordes
- You have grown used to those stingy 16oz pints.
- You have stopped wondering why US road signs always have to spell it out.In the US: "Speed Limit 30"Everywhere else: "30" (and liberal use of wordless pictograms for other signs).
- You no longer question the mandatory requirement that if you have kids, you must drive a mini van.
- Contrary to your behaviour just after you arrived, you now seek to avoid shopping malls.
- You now regard the UK as being part of Europe...
- You realise that you have to buy the Wall Street Journal if you want an egregious editorial slant.
- You can spot visiting Brits just by looking at their clothes.
- You have given up watching Prime Minister's Question Time on CSPAN, there are better things to do on Sunday nights.
- You regard Canadians as our "harmless neighbours to the north" rather than as fellow subjects of Her Majesty.
- You watch tapes of your kids taken just after you arrived and cannot believe they ever talked like that.
- You overhear the following on the commuter train and don't even flinch: "I'm going on business to England next week." "Yeah? I was there six weeks ago, nice place." "Uh Huh, I like it. Terrible food though" "Yeah."
If you have any more observations let us know.
Thanks to:- Terry Richards, Hugh Wynn Griffith, Andy Heydon, Allan Richardson, Norman Smith, Denise Debieux, Jeffrey Stephens, Barbara, Mark Coles, Graeme Blackwood, Matthew Cope, Katy Green, Chip Walker, Susan Zenel, Richard Scorer, Matt Morgan, Paul Hannagan, Tony Cook, Douglas Stanton, Peggy Underhill, Tom Black, Andrew Crane.