Dutchess

PART TWO

Actually… just last week… someone I felt was a friend and most definitely safe in that role sent me a message asking if we could be FWB. Even after explaining it wasn’t ok to be pushy, he persisted. So now.. someone I thought was a friend is no longer someone I feel comfortable being around or talking to. I’ve known the since he was a kid.

Everybody’s talking about brands and stores you’ve never seen in real life. You generally assume they exist, but they might as well be one giant prank the rest of the internet is in on.

You find a post that just sounds wrong. It makes no sense. It’s like OP lives in a weird alternate reality. 9/10 times, it’s just some USAmerican Thing.

You’re still not entirely sure how much an inch is. Or a foot. Or even how many of the former there are in the latter. You maybe know your height in feet and inches.

You have no idea how much a pound is. You’d also like to know how the fuck pound shortens to lbs.

What the fuck is “military time”

Somebody talks about some legal process or something similar. They don’t mention which country’s legal system this pertains to. You know anyway.

People talk about politics. None of it pertains to you. Many posts contain guilt tripping. “How can you not care about this?? Why won’t you reblog this?? People need to know this about x candidate for y position!” You’re busy trying to stay on top of the political landscape in your own country.

You pick up some random slang from the internet. Monkey see monkey do. You’re called racist. You didn’t know it was AAVE. You learnt it from black letters on white background, not from the mouths of people whose faces you could see. How would you have known? You try to unlearn it.

People tell you that you must publicly denounce Chick-fil-A or you’re homophobic. You don’t even know what a Chick-fil-A is.

People say you don’t know LGBTQ+ history. What they mean is you don’t know USAmerican LGBTQ+ history. Nobody cares about your country’s history.

You’re “called out” on using an “offensive” term. It’s (a direct translation of) a completely harmless word where you live.

People expect you to have an idea of how far apart 2 USAmerican states are. You barely know geography past your country’s immediate neighbors.

You randomly switch between British and American spellings. Nothing’s real and there are no rules.

People talk about multiple hour car rides and you get twitchy just thinking about it. You suddenly understand why USAmerican cars are so big.

Somebody talks about school shooting drills. You only ever had fire alarm drills.

You see a cool statistic. The study’s only about the US. It’s unfortunately of no use to you.

People misuse/misspell words and names from your native language. It’s tiring.

(You feel sorry for the French. Nobody should be allowed to mangle the word déjà vu like that.)

You’re still not over the fact that USAmerican school children are supposed to say that pledge thing every morning. You’re never getting over that.

You still don’t know why the men are fresh or what the fuck a sophomore is.

Who the fuck pays up first and then fills up gas??? That’s made up, right??

Everybody has a weird obsession with some comfort food you’d never even heard of before you signed up here.

Every time people talk about healthcare or workers’ rights, you want to cry.

“Christian” is shorthand for “Evangelical Protestant”.

When people make cracks about how tiny European countries are, you want to bring up your own as a counter-example… but then you remember you’ve never even seen most of it.

“Why would [person with a doctorate] from [X country] know how to speak English?”

“That’s not your real accent, is it?”

People using African-American and Black as synonyms.

People who have never been to your home town trying to convince you that it’s a warzone. (Okay, this one is mostly Facebook.)

“I would love to study a second language!” You have studied seven. The only one you can carry a conversation in is the one that’s used in all the movies.

You’re not sure who the “Founding Fathers” of your country would even be.

You’ve never been forced to read any of the classics people mention, and haven’t even heard of some of them.

“Oh my god how can you not know this song/film/show it’s a classic”

First time seeing people asking for money online for things such as medical treatments or bills

How tf does college work how is it different from university still don’t know

Grammar? I mean I remember some rules

Having a vague understanding of some terms but enough to use them (I hope)

What the actual fuck is your voting system

Ok so this state is shit but why do we hate it?

Where is this meme from/why is this a meme? But I guess it’s funny (I’m still confused about the Robert B. Weide meme)

You don’t understand how Americans don’t have National ID cards. In your country it’s virtually impossible to get anything done without a National ID card

You still don’t get the point of primaries since in yours and virtually every other country you know the party chooses it’s own candidate

You don’t get the concept of schools having their own school buses which pick up kids from home

You are used to landlords being people who inherited a second apartment and are renting it for extra cash.In the USA landlords are apparently people who own entire buildings and even entire corporations who own multiple buildings

There are 12 inches in a foot, and a foot is a little less than a third of a meter.

I actually had to look this one up because I didn’t know either, but apparently “pound” came from the Latin term “libra pondo” and lb is short for libra.

“Military time” is just 24-hour time. So 6 pm is 1800. Also they say the times a certain way; 4 am is said “oh four hundred” and 7:30 pm is said “nineteen thirty.” And it’s called that because the American military used that system, because I guess it’s clearer and more efficient?

Chick-fil-A is a restaurant, most popular in the South, that prides itself on its “Christian values.” Which would be fine if they just closed on Sundays and expected their workers to be extra polite, but they also give money to homophobic causes and are generally known to treat LGBT+ people badly.

“Freshman” refers to someone in their first year of high school, or 9th grade. This is the year when most students are 14 and turn 15. “Sophomore” refers to someone in their second year of high school, or 10th grade, and most students are 15 and turn 16. And these weren’t mentioned, but “junior” and “senior” refer to the next and last two years of high school, or 11th and 12th grade, respectively. These four words can also be used to refer to the first four years of college, so sometimes you need to specify “high school freshman” or “college sophomore.”

We do indeed pay for gas before we fill up. You swipe your card at the pump and then when you’re done it charges you for however much gas you took (or you can pay inside with cash and just fill up with however much you paid for). I guess there were too many people who would just fill up and leave without paying.

I know American higher education is different from the systems in other countries, but here, “college” and “university” are synonyms. There’s a technical difference (colleges are smaller and focus on undergraduate studies), so some schools are universities and others are colleges, but for the whole system and experience we mostly use “college” even if you’re technically attending a university.

Obviously I can’t explain all the weirdness of English grammar in one post, much less one bullet point, but if you have any questions feel free to ask me.

Our voting system (at least for presidential elections) is called the electoral college and yes it’s dumb but the way it works is that every state gets a certain number of people called “electors” based on their population. Even though the presidential candidates are the ones on the ballot, technically we’re voting for electors who have pledged to vote for them. Each state’s electors go to the candidate who won in that state, and the vote with the electors is done like a couple of weeks later, but it’s really just a formality these days.

8/7c means 8:00 Eastern Standard Time, 7:00 Central Standard Time. It’s used a lot for tv shows because they air simultaneously in those two time zones.

“Credit score” is basically an assessment of how likely you are to follow through on a promised payment, based on your history of paying your bills on time and such. I’ve never heard of a job wanting to know your credit score, but I suppose it might happen sometimes. As far as I know, though, it’s only used for things where paying people back is considered really important, like renting an apartment, taking out a loan, or getting a credit card.

I dunno what a National ID card is, but we do have ID cards. That’s what a driver’s license is.

Primaries are how parties choose their own candidate here.

—It’s kind of impossible to explain how BIG the US is to Europeans. Here’s the best I can do: ALL OF EUROPE (east and west!) is 10 180 000 square km. The US? Not Canada, not Mexico, JUST THE US, is 9 833 000 square km. Western Europe is 4 100 000 square km. LESS THAN HALF HALF THE SIZE OF THE US. When we joke about the size of European countries, it’s because there are only a very small handful of states smaller than your countries. My state (Arizona) is almost exactly the same size as Germany. It skews your perspective on the average size of a country A LOT.

I’m from Ohio originally. Which means I’m obligated to hate those from Michigan. It’s a college rivalry thing. Other than that.. I typically dislike states with weird and fucked up laws/politics.

We do learn conversions when taking science classes. It was covered in the first chapter of my Biology class actually. We also learned it in Elementary school.

I have known of jobs that checked credit scores and I’ve had mine run a couple times. It’s supposed to tell the employer how likely you are to need to steal from the company.

Most people will have either a state ID or a driver’s license. However, there are portions of the population that may struggle with the documentation necessary to get these ID cards. You have to have both your social security card and your birth certificate. Getting a copy of your birth certificate costs money and if you don’t live in the state you were born in, you may need internet access and a bank card. If you don’t have an ID card, there is a decent chance you may not have a bank account. You also have to have an address for it to be mailed to in that case. So those without secure housing are going to struggle with this.

Rape Escape

Easy and very effective

Requires nothing but your body

I don’t think I made it very clear but last month I was sexually assaulted by someone who I thought was my friend (I don’t want to talk about it don’t ask), and it’s… really fucked with my head. 

Had I known this a month ago I would have been able to get away. 

So, essentially, I’m really pleading with you to reblog this so everyone who follows you doesn’t get stuck in the same position I was with no way out. 

It took me about a half hour to get down with practice, but once you get it, it’s an intuitive movement.

I repeated the experiment later, wearing the boots but otherwise my usual clothing and mimicking the expression I thought I’d had at that moment. People parted like I was Charlton Heston.

I now wear that style of boots whenever possible. I recently had a man do a double-take as I walked by and ask me, politely, where I had served because I “looked like a soldier.” I’m not current or former military. I was wearing a flowy purple peasant top and looked as un-soldierlike as possible.

Wheel like you’re gonna win the Indy 500 and don’t care how.

Your crutches are short swords; walk like you can see them buried in the bodies of anyone who crosses (in front of) you.