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TV commercial

published: 2009-09-23

When we visit New York, on day one my man and I find ourselves dreaming up plans of staying here for some time. But as much as I love New York, by day two I'm wondering will I ever adjust to the amount of TV channels. Or grasp the abundancy of choices in any miscellaneous supermarket. Or accept how candid people are and frank. You're waiting to cross the street and studying the skies, whe  out of the blue someone next to you starts talking to you. But it's not really at you, it's more like it's in your direction. His mouth opens and words come spilling out in that peculiarly American way, that specific lingo wich masquerade as communication. Words, that's all. Without you having asked for explanation, they tell you that the president is here, hence the helicopters in the skies you're looking at, and so is Khadafi but the president won't be speaking to him. Not likely. And that person behind sunglasses doesn't register that I wasn't wondering about the helicopters but about the temperature. And that I knew "the president" was in town, thank you very much. Words seem to be ammunition here. You can literally see how that works in playgrounds. Having a son is interesting as it exposes new aspects of American culture. The kids here whisper the nastiest things to each other, epsecially to the newcomers, the outsiders. The ones that don't speak their language. They pinch, and tease, and pull toys away from them and call them names. To put it bluntly: they bully. All kids do, I know this of course. The difference being how they do it. Here, they do so very secretively. The moment they think a grown-up is watching, out come their angelic smiles and that specific lingo. The perfect child you see in tv commercials. This has made me slightly more suspicious of Americans than I was before. Watching kids' behaviour would almost have you think: it's all pretense. All of it.






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