June 17th, 2005
Culture Shock
Well, dear readers, I’ve done it; I’ve successfully relocated from a major Eastern city to a major Southwestern city. It took more than a month and two cross-country drives, but I’m here. And did you know, culture shock is a real syndrome? I always thought it was metaphorical until I tried to go abroad during college and got the brochure. Course that got tossed about ten moves ago, but a little online research yielded a list of the symptoms. I proudly claim the following:
~ Feeling very angry over minor inconveniences
~ Irritability
~ Withdrawal from people who are different from you
~ Loss of appetite (and anyone who knows me knows how unusual THIS is)
~ A need for excessive sleep
~ Upset stomach
~ Small pains really hurt
~ Depression
~ Loss of ability to work effectively
~ Unexplainable crying
~ Relationship stress
~ Exaggerated cleanliness
~ Feeling sick much of the time
Wow! I’ve got a whopper of a case, I guess. No worries though, because that’s what this blog is for–to vent my spleen over minor inconveniences.
My most salient pet-peeve-of-the-moment about my new compatriots is that they don’t know how to behave in stores. In one ten-minute trip to the grocery store, I moved four (4) grocery carts, and was trapped between the dairy case and one of those round aisle-blocking coolers by a woman who looked right at me, stopped, and turned to ask an employee a question. In a Major Eastern City store, man, she’d'a been toast. Of course I stood there politely fuming until she moved her ass. And this is not an isolated incident! I’ve been noticing it everywhere I’ve shopped for the past week–people abandon their shopping carts any old where! In the middle of the aisle! They block the aisle to inspect an item or have conversations! They don’t even twitch when you march up behind them! They’re completely unaware of what is going on around them! And I realize that after 11 months in Major Eastern City I’ve become a city slicker, because I don’t even feel guilty as I grumpily push their carts aside and refuse to respond to their cheery “Oh, excuse me”’s.
On the other hand, I clearly don’t know how to drive here. In Major Eastern City, I didn’t drive, because public transportation was fantastic, and parking was hell. Here in Major Southwestern City, a car may not be a necessity, but everyone has one just the same. And I don’t know the rules. Do you turn right on red? Why is the left turn green arrow on the wrong end of the light array? Can you really turn left when the green arrow isn’t showing? And everyone drives 55 MPH on busy congested in-town streets. Now really, what is the point, I ask you, of driving 55 when you’re going to have to stop for a light in just three blocks? But if you’re pulling out onto one of those streets, put the pedal to the metal, baby, because that oncoming traffic is coming on FAST. The other day, I went out on the interstate–it wasn’t even rush hour!–and I thought I must have somehow slid through a wormhole onto the Autobahn. Folks were driving 100 MPH (or so it seemed), weaving back and forth, merging, exiting from the left lane–it’s crazy, I tell you!
Another terrifying thing is that circumstances requiring crossing FOUR LANES of these speed demons are amazingly common. In the East, such intersections would be heavily marked with warning signs forbidding one to make a left turn onto, let alone cross, this kind of street. But here, the most dire warnings are limited to No U-Turn signs, “Speed Hump” (that kills me–it’s a speed BUMP, folks. Humping is what rude dogs do to your in-laws’ legs), and my personal favorite, “Gusty Winds May Exist.” Though obviously they will make no guarantee. Fortunately, and surprisingly, traffic is often light enough that crossing all those lanes is much more feasible than it sounds.
These are just the first major differences I’ve noticed, and since I’m irritable and feeling angry over minor inconveniences, I probably ought to avoid the Supercenter of Unmentionable Evil to avoid the temptation of running inconveniently abandoned shopping carts into their owners’ ankles; after all, all that crazy driving won’t help my upset stomach one bit. Guess I’ll just stay home alone and clean.
