This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Zeitgeist in NYC by Annette Baran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Never say “No”
When I left my old job in Germany, my colleagues gave me a couple of gifts. They thought might be helpful for me in New York. Besides getting a German cookbook for different types of wholewheat bread and rolls (indispensable), I received my new Bible, the wonderful and hilarious book “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” by Bill Bryson. It was just so refreshing and comforting to read that other people love the American culture like I do — yet- see it through a different lens once they have lived overseas.
My all-time favorite story is the one where Bill enters a pretty empty restaurant and sits at a table without waiting to be seated (the most normal thing in Europe). The waitress comes up and says indignantly, “I see, you already found a table,” and Bill responds,: “Yes, and I even got dressed by myself this morning!”
Inspired by this book, I started this blog and hope you’ll enjoy and forgive my different take on things here in New York. For somebody who didn’t grow up with mailboxes for with flags, roasted Marshmallows and who always had real candles on their Christmas Tree (without knowing anybody whose house got burned down), it’s quite an adventure to assimilate happily in New York – but I managed and here is why:
First of all, you notice that “No” is the longest word in the English vocabulary. People who use it, say “I don’t think it is a good idea”, “I really can’t say right now” or “Let me get back to you on this one”. Here, it takes a lot of time to just simply express that you don’t feel like something. But there is hope.
Recently, I was sitting on a playground set with my two-year old son. A baby boy came crawling up the stairs, not able to walk yet and wanted to pass us. He looked at us and said,: “Excuse me” and when we let him pass, he turned his head and said loud and clear “Thank you so much” before taking on the plank bridge while struggling with keeping his pants from slipping down and displaying his Sesame Street diaper. His Mom called him asking, “Would you like some juice, honey?” and he really answered, “Not right now, Mommy.”
It gave me the chills to hear a baby boy of maybe a year and change talking as if he was in a business meeting. But when his Mom announced that it was time to go home, he finally turned into the kind of baby I know. He forgot about the 101 of diplomacy that babies inhale with their formula here and yelled, “NOOOOO!” - I was very proud of him for just being so normal. All of a sudden I felt a little more at home.
Annette Baran
August 24th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
ajihege…
Terra Fotolog Chile …