Strange Things My (European) Husband Noticed in America This Week

Why we shouldn’t dump animals on the highway

My new-to-the-country husband from Denmark can’t help but wonder and poke gentle fun at all things America. You can find quite a few of his stories on my blog.

Here are some of the strange things he discovered this week.

Nativity scene with a fence

We passed a local church in our city of Santa Monica, CA, the other day and noticed they set up a beautiful Christmas nativity scene display. “Cute,” I said, without giving it a second thought.

But my husband asked: “Why is it surrounded by a fence?”

Indeed, I realized, every installation had an ugly metal fence tightly wrapped around it. The message it sent was loud and clear: “People are not to be trusted.” To a newcomer from Europe, where nativity scenes are common and unfenced, this was shocking.

“They really know how to kill the Christmas spirit,” my husband complained.

Is a fenced-in nativity scene an American obsession with fences gone too far? Ever since my husband arrived in the U.S., he’s been noticing jail-like metal fences in many unexpected places, from public schools to private houses. It got him thinking.

“All these fences are a subtle indicator of a defensive society built on mistrust,” my husband concluded.

Too much faith in American drivers

In our city of Santa Monica, middle-of-the-road pedestrian crossings are plentiful and are a very popular feature. Supposedly, the flow of traffic will stop as soon as a pedestrian’s foot hits the ground. What a fine idea. Until you face the reality: American drivers have little respect for pedestrians.

My husband tried one of those for the first time this week and learned for himself: even if the first lane of traffic stops, the second lane will very likely keep going. It takes not one but two separate drivers to make a conscious decision to stop, and the odds are not in the pedestrian’s favor.

“If the first car doesn’t hit you, then the second one will,” my husband concluded after attempting a crossing.

Indeed, that’s exactly what happened to a USC student who got killed crossing the street in Los Angeles recently.

Upset, my husband analyzed the situation.

“Things like right-on-red or even a basic pedestrian crossing demand a certain level of responsibility and care of others that local drivers simply don’t possess,” he concluded.

One shouldn’t throw animals on the highway

My husband’s been studying for his U.S. driver’s license exam and came across quite a few interesting rules that had more to do with the state of our society than driving regulations. One such rule explained that it was illegal to dump animals on the highway.

“That must have had that happen a lot if they put it in the driving test!” my husband exclaimed.

I’m sure it did.

Coming from the peaceful and predictable country of Denmark, he’s still shocked by the vastness of both, American land and American craziness.

“Isn’t it just common sense not to dump an animal on the highway?” my husband asked.

I thought about it and realized there wasn’t much common sense in America. Or trust in humanity.

We’re contained by fences, warning labels, and crazy laws. We’re treated like unruly children and we behave as such.

There’s no attention to detail

This week, my husband watched a plumber install a washer and dryer unit ten inches away from the wall, leaving all the piping and hook-ups visible from every angle. When confronted, he assured my husband that this was “the way we did things in the U.S.” I couldn’t argue with that.

After a long and careful observation, my husband has come to the conclusion that America lacked attention to detail.

“No one seems to care about how anything looks or feels,” he observed.

Everywhere we went, he started to notice the lack of attractiveness and “usability.” Be that a store sign or a metal fence, as long as it worked, it was fine.

“There’s a utilitarian approach to everything in the U.S.,” my husband noticed.

Coming from Denmark, world-famous for its design, where many buildings and objects are literally designed with happiness in mind (I wrote about that here), he’s having a hard time understanding that here in the U.S., we’re too busy just keeping our sh*t together and have no time for aesthetics. But, perhaps, we should.

Good design can make its users happier. And we could certainly use a bit more of that in our day-to-day lives. Surely, we can’t compete with a tiny and mighty country that has the time and the resources to invest in the way things look but we can at least start paying attention.

Hypocritical drinking laws

Another thing my husband discovered from the DMV booklet was that one wasn’t allowed to have an open container of alcohol in the moving car, even if he or she was a passenger. This got him started on the hypocrisy of the U.S. drinking laws.

“So an open bottle of beer in the car is illegal but driving home after three pints is acceptable?” he wondered.

Compared to Europe, where zero alcohol is tolerated while driving but drinking in public is widely accepted, the U.S. does seem to have it all backward.

When my husband and I drove by a bar on the side of the highway, he asked me how the drinkers were getting home. Since it was a small town in the desert, I assumed they weren’t calling an Uber.

He was also surprised to find out that in New York, you couldn’t buy anything stronger than a beer at a supermarket, and in Washington D.C., you couldn’t buy any alcohol at all after 10 PM. Yet arriving at our local pub in Los Angeles in a car seemed to be the norm for customers.

When it comes to alcohol, we just can’t figure ourselves out.

While endlessly flawed, America has given us a lot to talk, laugh, and write about. This isn’t a country to understand instantly, but it’s a source of many discoveries for years to come.