Is there an AMA American thread?

[upskilledotter]

I have so many (probably really boring) questions to ask of Americans (USA) but don’t know if a suitable thread exists.

Are you actually joking? I dont know one person that feels that way. I think there's a lot of pity and anger, but no envy!

Haha - yes, I have one of those. Basement gets a little damp if it rains heavily, but otherwise it's not too scary.

That's a great question. Honestly, I never think about it. because I could imagine getting very anxious about it if I gave it much mind. So far this has worked. I went to a training a few years ago on what to do if there was a gunman in my university. That said, I am aware that my Trump-loving next-door neighbour's house is bristling with guns (I've never been inside it, but my friend has). He's also a very kind man who is good to us (lesbian couple) and shares a cat with us. It's one of the things about America that after 32 years living here (British originally) I still don't completely "get" about the country.

I’ve enjoyed every trip I’ve done to America, particularly some of the southern states but I have some (possibly stupid) questions:

Do people really say “god damn it” a lot? It’s in every show and film but I’ve never heard it in real life.
I thought this was the same as being called ma’am but I got that a lot everywhere we went.

Do you come across a lot of anti-American attitude in real life? I’ve had some for enjoying America which doesn’t make any sense to me.

And slightly related I guess, do you think countries who do things differently (no pledge of allegiance in school/different gun laws/more (or less) leave/protections in employment) are doing them wrong?

The few American friends I have are firm believers in America being the greatest nation and people who disagree just don’t understand it and why it works but this is a very limited sample (literally 4 people).

On a day to day basis, I really don't worry about gun violence. But I do become more conscious of the possibility when I am driving, and I am very careful not to make a maneuver that might be perceived as cutting someone off, for example.

I did have active shooter training at work periodically. I'm not sure how many employers do that on a regular basis these days, but my employer was very safety conscious, and we had all sorts of risk reduction/health and safety trainings, including active shooter.

I think there are individual as well as age and socioeconomic differences. My parents (a doctor and a professor) have always been very conscious about waste and nature and the environment as are my kids and their friends, but for sure you see lots and lots of people who aren't. I'm not sure that's fully an American things though, look how many people on this site bristle at the smallest indication they shouldn't idle their cars, or might want to go electric, for example.

I think it probably depends where you live. I lived in high crime cities with lots of guns so yes, you do think about it, people tend to be more careful getting into altercations. But you get used to it. There were a few times I heard gunshots and it's not really shocking, it seems kind of normal.

I didn't realise how much subconscious anxiety I had about guns until I moved to the UK, it was so liberating.

Hah hah. Our house here does have a basement, but the only access is inside stairs. It was a nightmare when we needed a new furnace. They had to bring it down the stairs in pieces and reassemble it.

Religion - I'm from NYC and it's not a big thing there at all.

Milk with meals - my DH's family used to all drink milk with dinner and I thought it was completely bizarre. My family never has, my children almost never have, and I never will (my DH no longer does).

Drinking and driving - I actually think there's much more of a drinking culture in the UK. I remember being shocked by how many people thought it was ok to have a few and drive home when we first moved to England. It was drummed into us from a very young age that it's a never. I think teens were the worst offenders, but now that the drinking age is 21, it's a lot harder for them to drink.

Guns - Hate them. Wish they'd all go away and eff the second amendment. I don't think about them much when we're in the US, as in that someone might be carrying one. I do think about the culture around them being insane. The only ones I've ever seen irl are on law enforcement. I wasn't crazy about the massive semiautomatics the Amtrak police were carrying the last time we were taking the train in NYC, though. They seemed way too casual about them.

Yes at least I used to say goddammit all the time! I didn't realise til now that I've gradually stopped since moving to the UK. Where I used to say goddammit I now say fucking hell, if you're looking for equivalence :)

I come across anti-American attitudes a lot but it doesn't really bother me. Sometimes I agree!

I definitely don't think America is the greatest and nobody should criticise it. However I do think there are a lot of misunderstandings about the US that can lead to criticism that's not totally fair.

How do you cope?!

I have to confess I haven't read all this but even if you just skim the first few paragraphs you'll get an idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave_in_the_United_States

As per the wiki article, a lot depends on where you work and what the laws in your state are like. US friends who've had babies have been fortunate to have high earning husbands and flexible, white collar jobs so they've been able to finesse it.
By the time I was having children, I'd moved to the UK. Before that, I was a teacher and many colleagues tried to plan their pregnancy so that birth was near the end of the school year and they then had summer vacation to recover.

Drinking milk - lots of people do. As a child, there was a pitcher of it on the table at every meal and we were encouraged to drink as much as we liked. I don't drink it often but for many years I had a glass with breakfast and if I were having a sweet treat (cookies, cake).

Guns - are a fact of life in the US and you learn to live with them. Lots of people have one or two at home. My father did. We lived in a bad neighborhood and he used them occasionally to see off burglars.
I was given a bb gun (air rifle) for Christmas when I was 10 and my grandmother taught me to shoot it. She often used hers to keep squirrels off her bird feeder, as did my mother.
I was in the US a few weeks ago - both urban and rural - but was not really thinking about guns just like I'm not wondering about knives in the UK.

This! Always wonder this . People drive to bars and then start knocking back shots 😆

I have one.

There are lots of examples of someone doing something in an American sitcom and someone will respond “Why’d you do it?” And everyone roars with laughter.

Why? Is there a reference point?

How do parents cope with the very long summer holidays ?
Six weeks is too much imo.

Thank you @dreamingbohemian - and interesting that you write goddamnit as one word too!
I’m an avid user of the word fuck so glad to know it’s essentially the equivalent 😂

I may sound silly but I remember being amazed at how different things are across states. Like I know Europe is big and I don’t expect Italy to be the same as Spain in their culture and approaches but for some reason I didn’t put together that the size of America means states are the same.
In New York the attitude with people we spoke to was how lucky we were that the Uk doesn’t have hand guns and America should follow, but in a lot of the southern states they were astounded we would leave ourselves so open to attack and not being able to defend ourselves (but I will say every discussion was friendly and open).

To those of you who are American, have you ever suspected anyone you know of being undercover KGB officers?
Or, seeing as this is an anonymous forum, are you pretending to be American but are in reality undercover Russian spies?

What are Chicago, Detroit, Ohio and Austen like to live in and just how bad is the drug problem really in USA, including addiction to precription painkillers.

Austin, Tx - I spent some summers there when DH was on assignment. It is v hot (100F/37C + for days at a time and 99F all the other days 😂) in the summer and pretty mild in the winter (rarely below freezing). Like most of the southern US, there can be heavy rainstorms - the average rainfall is greater than London but it mostly falls in heavy bursts.
In general, Austin is a sprawling metropolitan area. Like most US cities, it doesn't have great public transport simply b/c it's so huge. Compared to other parts of Tx, lots of Austin is more liberal. It's the state capitol and there's a university so a bigger mix of people and ideas as compared to smaller cities and towns. Racially, it's mostly white or hispanic. (compare with Chicago which is roughly 30/30/30 white/hispanic/black or Detroit which is 77% black and 14% white)
They like to play up their music scene and SxSW (South by Southwest) is a big music festival there. They also like to play up their party scene. I had never seen so many and such large tattoos :)

I visited Oberlin in Ohio for a summer programme for baroque music. Oberlin is a small town with a liberal arts college (4yr undergrad BA/BS courses). It was pleasant and quiet - like you'd expect in a small town while the college kids are away. We took a day trip to Cleveland. It was a city but not very exciting.

Summer camps. Grandparents. Family vacation. We only get three days off in November for Thanksgiving (some states give the whole week), 10-14 days over Christmas, 2 weeks for spring break (end March/April). Depending on the state, there are up to 10/15 public holidays (bank holidays - some are federal, some are state) but they don’t always fall on a week day and if they don’t they don’t always get a corresponding weekday off. Not everyone gets the Jewish or Muslim or Hindu holidays off.

Basically, come summer children are exhausted. They need a slower schedule and time to rest. But parents need to work. Hence summer camps. Everyone knows this so the work culture revolves around it. The UK is in a transition period where historically most families had one parent available at all times and life was set up around this. That’s just not the case any more but the infrastructure hasn’t caught up. I don’t know how you all do it with inset days and daytime school events at random times and all the half terms and so forth. Sounds sooooo stressful!

Summer holidays can be challenging. The average in the US is from 10 to 12 weeks which harkens back to more than 100 years ago when children when often needed in the rural areas to help farm the crops.

When our children were small and DH and I were both working, they often attended day camp, went to visit grandparents, and of course, because DH and I were lucky to have generous annual leave, we took a long vacation together every summer with the kids.

One of the advantages of the long summer vacation is that teens can work and earn a decent amount of money. Both of ours were able to substantially pay for their first car from money earned in summer jobs during high school.

Are you embarrassed by Trump?

Are you aware of how the rest of the world views Trump?

I live in a suburb of LA, born and raised here.
We all have fenced yards, as most people have a pool, and fences are needed for safety reasons.
In California, all school children receive free breakfast and lunch, regardless of income.
When I had children, I used a combination of annual leave, company payments and state payments for a total of twenty weeks of maternity. I could have taken more, but it would have been unpaid.
Homecoming was explained very well already, but no one really cared about the homecoming court at my school, just the football game and dance afterwards.
Religion isn’t huge here, except to the LDS community. Sundays are for going to brunch.
Two weeks annual leave is usually for entry or lower level employees here. My husband started a new position two years ago, and negotiated for seven weeks AL.
And here, high school was a lot like TV/movies, except students were hired a lot as high school extras for TV and movies. 😂

I’m in a city in a central/southern state. School lunches here are free, and the kids can also have a free breakfast at school if they want it/arrive on time. It’s a case where so many students qualify for them that the school district decided to make it universal to save on admin; I feel a bit guilty because we could easily afford to stump up, but we do pay a lot in property taxes which fund the public schools so I guess we are indirectly.

School buses are a wonder. My oldest takes one as his school is on the other side of the city and once again I’m grateful that it’s free!

@tarheelbaby Aw, Cleveland is great. I was born there and went to undergrad there, so I'm definitely biased. There are amazing museums, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Orchestra, great shopping and cool restaurants. My DF said that they had to develop so many cultural institutions because the weather is crap.
@takemeonholidayrightnow Yes. Trump is the worst. Everyone knows it and we are embarrassed, furious and aware of how dangerous he and his enablers are. We are holding our breath that we all survive him.

We also have a basement that’s accessible from the side door of the house. I’ve never considered the horror potential though, we just make sure to lock the door! It’s useful for sheltering in during tornado warnings though. And the washer and dryer are down there too, which I much prefer to in the kitchen which was the case in most places I lived in the UK.