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.

It's the same when someone is thinking of moving anywhere and asks for advice. Almost as if "how dare they want to live somewhere other than Britain", and yes it's usually someone who visited X country decades ago, or their sister's neighbour's niece's friend didn't like living there.

Great thread, and really interesting to hear the completely different life experiences of those of us in different states, or even north and south of same state.

I’m in Northern California and it is typically very liberal in most ways. Vocally anti Trump (!), pro human rights and eco responsibility.

Most questions have been answered, but let me touch on just a couple.

Vet costs: recently our 14 year old kitty had a ‘whole body scan’ as part of her annual checkup. $750 but all well they said. One week later she became unwell and was dead within 24 hours and $3800 in fees. We were fine paying it and could not see her suffer, but that A+ health screening adds insult to injury.

Elder care/dementia - if you have money there is amazing care to be had. Beautiful places like luxury hotels, with lovely food, activities and facilities. The step up to locked floor for dementia care not so much. My DFIL did not have his finger or toenails cut for months, nor his hair! We begged them to give him a sedative so that we could do it, but no. We cleaned his room every time we went, despite having cleaners and carers round the clock, they said. This was costing more than $17000 monthly - again, worth it if good care. I dread to think what a state funded facility would be like, but it couldn’t be much worse for person care, I suspect.

Re: school dances: Prom is a big deal in most parts of the country. Some teenagers take dates; others go with groups of friends. Some take non-romantic dates. My niece asked her best friend, who lived 100 miles away, to prom; it was an excuse for them to spend a weekend together. One of my students took her younger brother to prom, because her school had a fancier prom than his school, and her mother thought he should get to experience the fancier prom.

Other school dances are not as numerous as they used to be. Where I live, school dances are most popular for kids aged 12-14, as a carefully supervised introduction to teenage social life. No one brings a date to those. Some unlucky souls have their parents chaperone.

A bit of historical context might be useful. American high schools blossomed between 1900 and 1930, when the country opened one new high school a day, on average, for 30 years. Until WW1, only a small fraction of teenagers attended high school. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a big push to get kids into high school (instead of going to work at 14), and by 1945, most were. Films and television and American culture generally tend to be very nostalgic about high school culture c. 1940s-1960s, when it became a shared experience across all different social groups. Today, film depictions of American high school often split the difference between depicting it as it is now and deploying the nostalgic tropes about high school culture that viewers expect.

Its increasingly a big deal in the Uk too usually after GCSEs have finished
Im 53 and was a big fan of American teen literature in the 80s
Paticularly Sweet Valley High and Cheerleaders and of course films like Breakfast Club
American high school seemed to me to be far more exciting than my dull comprehensive in the North west of Engldnd 😂

I was perhaps a bit harsh in how I worded my earlier comment, and I think the level of overt anti-Americanism on MN has trended down in the last few years for some reason.

But those "I'm thinking of moving to America" threads reveal a lot of bias, prejudice, and misinformation about the U.S. that inevitably casts the whole country in a bad light compared to the UK. It's taken as gospel truth that the food is uniformly rubbish, the poor have no access to healthcare, and that Americans are ignorant and poorly educated. And it's not unusual to find whole threads soliciting people to bash America:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2809059-To-ask-why-Americans-are-so-loud

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1529129-to-think-some-Americans-are-just-stupid

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/3342486-Do-you-dislike-Americans

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2742654-To-think-the-Americans-have-a-cheek

and one of my favorites,

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/4952766-americans-are-lazy-cooks

I've had people have a go at me because they had to buy a ticket to visit a museum in NYC (I'm a New Yorker).

So I'm perhaps a bit oversensitive to it, but there is a lot of anti-Americanism on MN. And I don't see anything similar for any other nationalities, certainly not to the same degree. It seems to be the only prejudice that is socially acceptable here.

@x2boys Sweet Valley High! I was obsessed with them! Had around 200 eventually I think. My Canadian family used to send them over here for me as some were generally published over there before the UK

Wow @MissConductUS I missed those threads.

I don't know squat about soccer aka football, but I think that the recent World Cup did dispel some of the misconceptions for many foreign visitors.

I think that @rachel734 makes some good points about the historical context of high school. That history is one reason that so many high school traditions remain important parts of US culture. These include the proms, homecoming and football games, and especially graduation. Even for people who go on to college (aka university), high school graduation is probably the most important rite of passage. Our granddaughter graduates this year, and we are already starting to make plans for parties, travel, etc.

Interesting tidbit about "high school." The term "high school" that is used almost universally in the US for secondary school came directly from Scotland. The first school to call itself a high school was (and is) the Royal High School in Edinburgh. An early school in the US was modeled on the Royal High School and the name spread.

Could I ask a Malcolm in the Middle question (which I’ve just started watching with my teenager — yes, we are literally the last people in the world to watch it…) ? (I did live in the US for a couple of years in the nineties, but in a commune in Massachusetts, so no relevant experience!)

Having been accustomed to the giant house sets of older US sitcoms, is MitM a more accurate depiction of what I would term working-class, but I imagine in the US would probably be classed as middle-class housing, food, leisure, clothing etc, for the period in which it is set?

Yes, they are clearly depicted as a working or middle class family.

I’m not from the USA and haven’t been there for some years but have visited quite a few places in my younger years.

The slightly different places (from the usual tourist NYC etc) I enjoyed were Philadelphia, Aspen and surrounds (in September) and Santa Barbara.

The drive along the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Los Angeles, particularly Big Sur was spectacular as well.

I would love to take the children but it’s so expensive now! I found Americans generally friendly and curious. Easy to talk to.

Americans love British accents and therefore like Brits. You rock up with a British accent and everyone will want to talk to you. There is a hilarious (to me) scene in Love Actually (I know, I know) where the girls in the bar are having Colin say words in his accent and they think it is JUST SO CUTE.

Other differences worth clarifying:

Pavement:
UK - what pedestrians walk on, separates houses/shops from where vehicles drive and park.

USA: the surfacing on the part that vehicles drive and park on. In the UK you’d call this tarmac.

Tarmac:
UK - see above.
USA - what airplanes taxi and take off/land on

Road:
UK - the bit between pavements that vehicles drive/park on, also a name for a thoroughfare.
USA - not really used and rarely a name ime

Street:
UK - pavement + road (UK definitions)
USA - the bit that vehicles drive/park on

Sidewalk:
UK - see very funny Michael Macintyre sketch on Americans using unnecessarily descriptive terms (eyeglasses (where else would they go?), horseback riding (which other bit of he horse would you sit on?), sidewalk (where else would you walk than to one side?) etc)
USA - UK’s pavement

The USA and the UK, two countries divided by a common language. Source of many a dispute in my marriage!

An important difference: in the US when we say "fanny" we mean your bottom, hindquarters, arse. I have learned from Mumsnet that is NOT what you mean. Big distinction!

I loved Sweet Valley, I wanted to be a tanned blonde in California so bad. In reality I’m a dark blonde who burns 😭

Vocab difference, also yard and garden. IME, in the US they're used interchangeably, with yard being the common usage for what would be called a garden in the UK. Certainly when my mother told us to go play in the backyard she meant the back garden.

Surgery in the US means a surgical operation or procedure. You see your doctor in a doctor's office.

I had also never heard the term push bike until I moved to the uk

A yard is the open-air area around a house, usually a lawn, sometimes with trees. A garden (U.S.) is a planted area, with vegetables or flowers, that someone put some effort into. My mother has a large yard with a small garden in front.

I've wondered if those definitions have changed over the years? I grew up in what I would have considered a solidly middle class family in the northeast. My mother was a doctor, but worked in public health, and my father was a professor, so good, secure careers, but not hugely high paid. We had a very nice but not fancy house, good health insurance, everything we needed, and all the extracurriculars - lessons/clubs/hobbies/sports/driving lessons - that we wanted, but not lots of things other than that. We had summer jobs when we were teens and part-time jobs in university.

I suspect these days this would be thought of as very upper middle, but not sure.

We wouldn't have differentiated in our house, anyway, except if talking about the vegetable garden. My mother would have said, can you go pick some tomatoes from the garden, but would have told us to play in the yard, which would have included all the land around the house, which included planted areas (which we understood we weren't meant to kick balls into 😂).

Road:
UK - the bit between pavements that vehicles drive/park on, also a name for a thoroughfare.
USA - not really used and rarely a name ime

Road is often used in the US for "country roads" to distinguish them from interstate highways that run through the countryside. And lots of them have "road" in the name.

What’s a HOA please ?

What’s HOA?

An HOA is a homeowner’s association. It is a set monthly fee paid regardless of whether you own or rent, in communities that provide services of any type.

I live in an over 55 community that has 10,000 people - it’s a gated community like a small town. Multiple types of homes, from 1 bedroom apartments and up to multi million dollar homes. There are three swimming pools, a cinema, post office, gym, tennis courts etc. and they take care of all landscaping and external maintenance. Fees include property tax (kind of like council tax) which depends on cost of your property, internet. Garbage and water. We pay $1976 a month. Our friends pay $1400 a month. It is kind of a shocker given we haven’t had a mortgage for years, but all in all worth it not to have to worry about house upkeep.

Lol yes my son has diabetes and im on American diabetes facebook group
An one posterwas asking what people used to carry their supplies ie insulin ,needles etc in
And somobody suggested a fanny pack
Which made me smile i did know the American meaning was very different to the british meaning but thr images it conquered up😂

Absolutely true. I have lived in the US for over 30 years and have carefully retained my British, RP accent, which has unquestionably got me further than I deserve!

I’ve definitely found this every time I’ve been to the US - “you guys are British? We looove the Brits!” I think it’s great 😊