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| A Stranger in a Strange Land - Sherwood K. Zern |
"Don't try to understand them; and don't try to make them
understand you. For they are a breed apart and make no sense." (Hawkeye in
Last of the Mohicans)
The
nice British man at the hotel health club showed me how to push the correct
buttons on the treadmill, because I don’t treadmill much or ever. It’s boring
and a little too hamster-like. Besides most of the exercise “machines” are set
up for giants.
I’m
more hobbit sized or hamster-esque.
Mostly,
I enjoy dancing my way to fitness in zumba class or punching my way to a better
attitude through combat kickboxing, where I can pretend to front kick giant
bullies to death.
Anyway,
there were no zumba classes, so the nice young man was pointing out the various
treadmill buttons: hamster wheel power on; cliff incline going up; mountain
avalanche going down; trudging speed; time left to trudge; number of cookies
worked off; etc.
When
he pointed to the giant red stop button, I looked at him and asked, “So does
that mean the same thing in England as it does in America?”
“Sure,”
he said. “Stop means stop.”
Sort
of, except when it doesn’t.
Last
night our British waitress disappeared for twenty minutes, because she had to
“put a cake down” she later explained.
The
table full of Americans looked at her—confused.
“You
killed a cake?” someone asked, shocked.
“What?
No. What?”
“In
America, when you “put something down” it means you killed it or are going to
kill it; like when we’re going to put Fluffy down. Like that.”
“What?
No. What?”
Is
it any wonder that the world is a boiling kettle of misunderstanding? It’s so
hard to make sense of each other. Honestly. Who kills a cake? You might “polish it off” but that’s
about it. And England is a country that speaks American, except when they
don’t.
My
husband asked a cab driver if they do any “mutton bustin’” in England.
The
cabbie replied, “No, we leave that to the Welsh and we call it sheep shaggin’.”
“No,
that’s not what I meant. Mutton bustin’ is putting your children on the backs
of sheep and letting them get bucked off.”
Not
the same thing at all.
And
that’s why conflict and invasion are inevitable, because dialogue is filled
with the endless land mines of misunderstanding, confusion, and kooky talk.
Sheep
shaggin’ indeed! Who let’s their sheep run around with a bad haircut from the
seventies?
Linda
(Shag Cut) Zern
