Lettuce, Cashiers & Microwave Potatoes

I had been warned by multiple people that the transition back into the USA often proved more difficult than the transition into a completely foreign country. When I returned from Mexico and especially Denmark, I found this to be quite true. Suddenly, my eyes were opened to all the negative or strange aspects of our culture that I had been previously blind to.

So I was expecting massive struggle for weeks upon returning from my 3-month South American voyage. 

But it didn’t come.

I realized that after traveling to such a wide variety of places and experiencing so many unusual things, nothing could possibly surprise me anymore. My journeys made me so adaptable to all varieties of life that I could easily pick up any variety of it and feel perfectly at home.

Although there was the lettuce incident.

I was at the grocery store casually strolling through the produce department when a woman unknowingly caused a head of iceberg lettuce to drop onto the floor. I picked it up, and when she realized what had happened, she said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

I was completely thrown off by this casual interaction because I had been outside of English-speaking regions for so long. My immediate thought process: OH MY GOSH WHAT COUNTRY AM I IN?? WHAT LANGUAGE DO THEY SPEAK HERE?? WHAT DO I WANT TO SAY AND HOW DO I SAY IT IN A LANGUAGE SHE WILL UNDERSTAND????? …..long awkward pause….. “Uh….It’s ok.” And then I walked away quickly.

I’m most definitely an awkward person in normal daily life… But that was abnormally awkward by even my standards!

I then proceeded to have a super long conversation with the cashier about nothing of importance just because I could do it effortlessly for the first time in three months.

It’s true that nothing really shocked me, but I did notice many new things. For example, I noticed that we as Americans have very overloaded schedules, which becomes especially obvious with the large quantity of pre-packaged food for sale, even within the produce department. Carrots and watermelon already washed, cut, and ready to go, “microwave-ready” potatoes (I thought normal potatoes were pretty much all set for that?)

A quick highly-opinionated theory: In my experiences abroad, a major difference I’ve seen is perception of relaxation. Many places respect the need to recharge one’s battery, be it through 1-2 months holiday time per year, shorter work days, or even just more reasonable expectations. Here in the USA though, or at least the midwest, I feel like everybody is simply expected to be running a constant relay race, and anyone who fulfills their need for downtime is looked upon as being lazy. In my time at the community college, I was taking 14-19 credit hours per semester, working two jobs, president of a campus club, and highly involved in four different church and community activities. On a good day, I could jam in maybe 5 hours of sleep; most days were closer to 3 though. Not because I procrastinated, but simply because I had such a large amount to do that sleep became optional. And the crazy thing about this lifestyle is that it’s 100% normal! I was not some rare overachieving college student, I was simply one of the crowd, rushing about in my busy life.

So if this is normal, it explains why fast food is so popular, why packaged food is the norm (if one can save time by not peeling carrots, by golly they’re going to do it). It explains why health problems are occurring at young ages (no sleep + stress = bad news for the body), why suicide rates are skyrocketing. It even helps explain the large number of traffic-related injuries and deaths, because sleep deprivation causes more traffic accidents than drunk driving. Plus, the person reading a newspaper at the wheel might have time to do so at home in a different culture, but in this one, they must either do it while driving or not at all.

And that’s the end of my highly-opinionated not-so-quick theory about all the problems we seem to encounter that many other countries magically don’t have.

That’s one of the many things I adore about experiencing daily life elsewhere: my own “normal” turns 3D, and suddenly I can see it from multiple angles I never even knew existed when it was flat.