Cultural Quirks About Your Home Area

I've never actually heard anyone say pissah.

Wicked? All the time. "You better take a coat, it's wicked cold out."

 

Actually it's quite common among certain classes of people

https://youtu.be/M3hN_gFvz5Y

Hotwater

 

Another oddity of my place: people here don't know how to pump gas. It's illegal to do that yourself here; a gas station attendant must be there to fill the tank for you. Therefore when I and many people like me travel out of state, I have to read the instructions written in iconography to remember how a gas pump works.

 

That sucks I can't remember the last time I didn't pump my own gas


Hotwater

 

It's rare here to get a gas station attendant fill up your car but what sucks about it? I don't mind at all! Ah wait.. you're supposed to tip them?
Last time some employee at the gas station filled up my car i was rather suprised. Its really rare

 

I vaguely remember as a very young child there were still a couple of stations here with attendants but I haven't seen it in years

But a few years ago I was passing through a state with attendants, I can't remember where, maybe NJ? I thought I was being robbed when the attendant knocked on my window and asked for money lol

 

Lol yeah, i also recall thinking for a second wtf is this guy doing. But it got clear soon enough. And they don't charge extra for it here!

I also noticed some remarks about greeting strangers or not: here the divide in that clearly lies in small towns/countryside and bigger towns/cities. In the latter its far less custom to greet strangers, they can even look weird at you for doing so. In the countryside its more the opposite.

I find it real hard to think of real cultural quirks though. Most i come up with are stereotypes, which you know are often a bit exaggerated. Frisians for instance are supposed to have extra broad beds so they can be obstructive even while they're sleeping.
Obviously projected on us by those nasty Hollanders

 

there's actually a full service gas station within walking distance of here. it's only the second one i ever remember encountering, but it's currently the closest gas station to where i live. one time i accidentally pulled up to the attendant pump, and when he came and told me what i was doing i gladly moved to the next section. it's an extra 20 cents per gallon for that shit here.

but that all seems fair; if you can afford a couple extra bucks to have someone else deal with filling your tank, why not do it? what really bothers me about the place is that even though they have credit card readers at the pumps, they don't work at night. so if i get home late and want to fill up, i need to go downtown because the local gas pumps will just read my card and then not pump gas anyway.

 

Lively, fast pace. Never sleeps, always something going on.

 

Fads used to last a year or two. Now they drag on for decades.

The teens who were doing it in the 90's are now doing it together with their children.

 

Wow, saggy with their kids? Parents being punks!

 

I wore baggy wide legged jeans back in the day. But I don't see it much around here anymore. I thought it died out by the mid 2000s

 

While not quite as long as the 'pants below the rear end' fad, the war in Afghanistan has dragged on for about 16 years. It's become another familty tradition for those who have served in the military with children taking the place of their parents. The U.S. is stuck in a rut.

 

Yeah, I was just talking to my wife about that (Afghanistan) about an half hour ago. I'm not sure why in theeee HELLL, we still need to be there!? Should have left May 3, 2011 (day after Bin Laden was killed) or much sooner.
Parents deployed-retired, and then, right behind them... their kids enlisted-deployed. It's crazy.

 

Some people order a toasted salad sandwiches in the cafes around here.

 

They're still there because their original mission which involves decreasing the crippling influence of the Taliban on society is far from over.

 

Not our problem anymore, people of Afghanistan need to stand up and battle this themselves now, and we, the US, need to move on.

 

If things were always as simple as we can state it...

The people of Afghanistan can't do that on their own. Other countries involved shouldn't simply back out because they now feel they 'need to move on'. But yes, I'm not sure americans are the best force either to do things there in the name of the UN. Im just stating why they're still there now.

 

A cultural quirk about the U.S. in general is that it just can't manage to refrain from sticking its nose in other people's business. Britain has the same quirk but even worse.

A spoof from The Onion.

Soldier Excited To Take Over Father’s Old Afghanistan Patrol Route

http://www.theonion.com/article/soldier-excited-take-over-fathers-old-afghanistan--56731