American’s can be a tat crazy…
I know I know, Dutch people are cheap…
Belgium people are not so smart (or so they say)…
And French people just DON’T wanna talk English when you are on vacation in Euro Disney…
No typing and peeing!
We love to put people in small little boxes, so we can make ourselves feel better. This post is not about that! I love everybody, every ethnic group, every religion, every culture, every “we do it our way” and this post is just meant to be funny and make you think (a bit).
Since we immigrated to this beautiful country I have noticed some strange things and some of them make me lay awake at night and think and some just make me chuckle and turn my head. I would love to share these thoughts with you and hope you’ll enjoy and maybe get a chuckle out of it as well…
So here we go with my first “Crazy Americans!”
The things you see when you first come into this country are astonishing! EVERY THING IS BIG, OR BIGGER, well except for the public restrooms that is!
And i'm sorry to say but he people are truly bigger here too. (I see the difference getting smaller, USA versus Europe lately, but 15 years ago the difference was really shocking). My sweet aunt took me to a local grocery store and that is where I encountered my first “obese lady”. I can tell you my mouth and jaw almost reached the street, and I had to sneak behind her to watch again, and again, to make sure my brain was NOT playing tricks with me. She had a normal big size torso, normal big size legs but her butt was almost as big as the whole sliding door of the grocery store! I looked at my aunt and she just shook her head, as if to say, "keep your manners and don’t stare". But I just couldn’t help myself. I had seen nothing like this in my sixteen years being on this planet…
An American restroom...
A couple of weeks into my stay here we went to the movies. I think it was Star Wars but I could be wrong, and I desperately needed to go to the bathroom. I walk into the bathroom and the first thing I notice is that there is about ONE INCH AND A HALF of room between the door and the frame!
“WHAT’S THIS?!?”
“How am I suppose to pee, if anybody that walks by can just watch me sit there and do my business!!??” You feel embarrassed enough when the walls don’t go all the way up and if you pee everybody can hear you, but SEE you… Well that is a whole different dimension!
So while I’m sitting there figuring out how I can pee comfortable without anybody peeking in, I was thinking about how I came in this little restroom in the first place. The door opens INWARDS!!! “Hmmmm, why would that be….?”
Soo I finally got the peeing done with and was pretty proud of myself for not sounding too loud and I got up, try to open the door and to my amazement (what I didn’t “get” coming into the toilet) I almost had to sit back on the seat in order to open the door and get out! And you have to keep in mind at age 16 I weighed about 50 kilo’s…. uhmmm… 114 pounds...
From that moment on I have checked every public restroom (I know, I know, who’s crazy now…) But for every 20 public toilets there is only one that has a door opening OUTWARDS! So now we go back to that lady at the supermarket in 1995. If I already have so much trouble getting in an out a public restroom (and yes this includes, your Walmart, your rest areas, your restaurants, your movie theatres, your casino’s, your schools, your racetracks your airports, your public buildings, your hospitals, and so on and so on) besides the fact that it is just embarrassing to hear or SEE somebody pee (or worse), how on earth does the average American women who in most cases is slightly bigger than me, manage to get in and out of the restroom in a decent manner???
And no I haven’t had the guts to check the men’s restrooms, but I’m sure it can’t be that different from the ladies…
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