Oh My God WHAT.

[brigdh]

People. The same girl from my high school class, who I was complaining about having gotten married two weeks ago (uh, I was complaining two weeks ago, not that she got married two weeks ago (...I THINK.)) apparently now HAS A BABY.

WHAT. I. That is totally against the rules.

Comments

[threewalls]

It's so weird, isn't it? Because you know that they're your age or thereabouts-- except-- they're pregnant or with a baby and it's impossible to see yourself that way.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, it is weird. I adore children and yet cannot even imagine the circumstances in which I would want to be having a baby already.

[threewalls]

I went to a friend's 21st birthday, where we had to entertain her three children. This is nothing I could fathom for myself.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

...yes.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You will! I insist that everyone share in my traumas.

[doire]

It happens somehow. And then I realise that both my children are older now than I was when they were born.

I don't remember getting older, but I suppose I must have.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, now that would be scary too.

It happens when we're looking, I think.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Freaky, isn't it? You went to high school with her, you share citizenship and language, and yet it turns out she's living in an entirely different civilization from the one you live in, and very likely always has been.

This is the sort of thing that I always find makes it impossible to explain the United States to Europeans. They think they know it's a big country, but they don't really get it. And how can we be surprised, given the difficulty of wrapping our own minds around the full extent of it?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. She has always been living in an entirely different world; she was vehemently pro-life in high school, but went to college and slept with someone in the first month or two and was convinced she was pregnant. It somehow ended up falling to me to find her local Planned Parenthood clinics, despite the fact that I was several hours away. Of course, it turned out that she wasn't pregnant, and as far as I know, she's gone back to being pro-life.

It continues to surprise me. I've no doubt it shocks people who haven't been here.

[solo.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of thing that I always find makes it impossible to explain the United States to Europeans. They think they know it's a big country, but they don't really get it. And how can we be surprised, given the difficulty of wrapping our own minds around the full extent of it?

You think this doesn't happen here? Looking at what people around me do, say, eat, what they're interested in, how they live their lives, I sometimes feel like I'm an alien from Mars. And okay, maybe I shouldn't have moved into this semi-rural neighborhood... but I've felt like that to some degree pretty much my entire life.

It's not about the size of the country (Scotland has five million people...), it's about mindsets.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It is about mindsets, and I didn't mean to imply that European countries are socially homogenous merely because they're not as big as the United States. But at the same time, my sense -- perhaps incorrect -- has been that the scale of the issue and the degree of difference between subcultures here is such that it becomes a difference of kind, and not just of degree.

I'm basing this mostly on conversations I've had in Paris, and my impression may be an artifact of discussions with people whose preferred style tends toward the search for the grand unified theory. But still: I've lost count of the times when discussions have gone from, "Americans are . . . ," supported by evidence from, say, time spent in Louisiana, through, "Well, that's probably true of that niche culture, but . . ." and winding up somewhere in the realm of, "No, they're all Protestants and they all go to church, but we're talking multiple distinct cultures here; I don't know the differences but they sure do." With a side of, "No, that's a 20-hour trip by car."

And there's a level, too, where it isn't all mindset. I grew up in a small town here, and I too have been like an alien from Mars in my home culture. Like you, I'm not interested in most of the things they're interested in, and vice versa, my goals in life aren't theirs, and so on. But we do have something of a baseline in common. I know the verbal code; I understand the assumptions; I know what I can say at a dinner party without being rude, and so on through the tiny unconsidered aspects of living in any society. On that level, I'm not an alien at all.

But put me in many other American subcultures and I'm at sea, and that will be true even of many subcultures that look a lot like the one to which I'm native. I have to depend on the people around me not expecting me to get their cues -- and they have to depend on my not expecting them to get mine. Again, my impressions may be false, but it is my impression that this is much more pronounced a feature of American society than it is of most European societies. Low context is us; when we try to go high-context we can't talk to one another at all.

[call-me-ishmael.livejournal.com]

I think the weirdest thing I've had happen is discover the guy I dated back in 8th grade had a kid with a high school girl. That was seriously WTF, but I guess it's because I always see people how they were and somehow expect them to stay there, unchanged.

Time is scary.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

It's so weird. I know exactly what you mean; when I see people I knew when I was little, it's so bizarre to see how they've changed.

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

I had a friend who got his girlfriend pregnant at age 19, married her in Las Vegas, and got divorced a couple of months later. (If someone had told me this, I'd have assumed they were making it up, because it's so cliche. Yet it happened.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Heh. It does sound like a joke. Though I almost have to wonder if it was worth it to go to Las Vegas- surely you can get a quickie marriage anywhere, now?

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

I think they might have planned the trip to Vegas before she got pregnant.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. May as well add a wedding to the vacation then, I suppose.