Valerie is back to work and that means that I am back to distracting her. This may seem political at first, but rest assured, politics is way too boring.
There is a lot of serious debate about what it means to be an American, and what you should do to be an American if you weren’t born here or if your ancestors didn’t walk here from Korea via the Bering Strait. Much of this focuses on if people should learn to speak English – a fun debate to watch as the people who insist upon others learning the language butcher it. I don’t want people to learn English for me because I will never talk to them anyway. In fact, I prefer that they not learn English because then the barrier to being antisocial is theirs and not mine.
What I would like people to change is the way they smell. Of all the things people can do to make themselves more acceptable, in my opinion, is to wear deodorant. I realize that in other countries this isn’t the norm and other cultures don’t put the emphasis on smelling pretty that Americans do. However, we are not in those countries or living in those cultures – at least my nose isn’t living there.
When I lived outside of the United States I will own up to the fact that I continued to make sure I smelled clean before leaving the house but otherwise did my best to blend in with the local population or appear Canadian as much as possible. I’m not ashamed of being an American but people have axes to grind with Americans but not Canadians. No one has a problem with Canada, although they should.
You’re supposed to do things to show respect to local
sensibilities when you visit faraway places. It annoys my nose that – while people expect this of
Americans – they don’t do this in America. There are so many things that can be done to bring people
closer together but that will never happen when you smell like you haven’t
bathed in months and used paprika to cover it up. Besides, it won’t matter how well you speak English if I
can’t get close enough to you to communicate with you without gagging. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in America, do as the Americans do. Daily, and with products for under the arms.
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