Saturday, June 20, 2015

Cultural Sweatpants


Hello USA! Our family is taking a short break from France; we will be in the states all summer. We arrived in Charlotte on June 2, after a (thankfully) uneventful flight across the Atlantic. The next day, as Greg and I were running some errands, he asked how I felt to be back in America. I described it as “comfortable, like wearing sweatpants.” Greg laughed and suggested that I adopt this as my new code name for the general feeling of returning home: Cultural Sweatpants.

Think about it – when you wear sweatpants, you’re usually not very concerned with how you look. You’re not trying to make a good impression, you’re just dressing for your own comfort. Sweatpants are relaxing and cozy -- you can get away with slouching and being blissfully lazy while wearing them. It’s the same thing with your home culture. You don’t have to think about figuring out the rules of society because you’ve known them all your life; it’s the way you grew up. So no matter how long you’ve been away from home, you can easily slip right back into the cultural dance.

Having said that, there are a few things about my home culture that two years in Europe had caused me to forget about….things that I noticed as if for the first time. First and foremost is good ol’ Southern Hospitality: just the friendliness of people in general. Strangers will often strike up a conversation or even flatter you with a compliment out of the blue while you’re in line together at Wal-Mart. That just doesn’t happen in France.


Other things I noticed were annoying rather than pleasant. For example, the tendency for retailers to overcompensate for the oppressive heat by blasting the A/C so cold that you have to bring a sweater with you even though it’s 98 degrees outside. Noisy restaurants and the lack of sidewalks and good public transportation are among the other annoyances. Still, these pale in comparison to the terrific “ahhhhhh” experience of easing into those comfy cultural sweatpants. The ability to understand and be understood is a glorious feeling indeed.