Americans are a queer tribe. Lived here my whole life and still have no earthly idea why we do half the shit we do. One quirk that I've always been particularly baffled by is our obsession with roadside crosses. I'm not talking about the ones signaling the presence of a church or meant to menace interstate traffic (the latter seems a bit odd too, until you stumble inside a Southern Baptist church) but rather the ones that result from our fetish with marking where someone died in an auto accident.
The one in the photo above is right beside the entrance to one of Louisville's largest public parks, as well as a weird five way intersection. Growing up, you couldn't drive to town without passing four or five such crosses. "Hey y'all look, my uncle died right thar!" Of all the things in a person's life to memorialize, place of death just seems a bit morbid. I don't get it. Do people do this in other countries too?
Signs. This may not be a uniquely American obsession but it seems like half this country seems to delight in putting up signs telling people what to do. The other half of the country takes their delight in pointedly ignoring said signs. I'm pretty sure pets can't read, can't decide if this is an exercise in futility or absurdity... Either way, everybody gets to have a little fun but I can't see how it's worth the effort.
For all our pride in our exceptionalism we sure do like our homogony. Cookie cutter houses in cookie cutter subdivisons, driving the same cars, taking the same vacations in cookie cutter condos. If you took away flags, bumper stickers, and yard signs, would Americans even be able to express themselves?
Do they put the national flag on anything and everything in other countries too? Beer cans, swimsuits, door mats, underwear, automobiles, anything comes in flag these days. Does patriotism-as-marketing count as peak capitalism? I can't quite reconcile being so enthusiastic about something that you put it on everything and simultaneously so indifferent to it that it is casually discarded.
Forget the gold standard, shit tickets toilet paper will be the standard of value in post-apocalyptic America. Well maybe not, that'll probably be ammo, but if spring of 2020 was any indication Americans certainly think that it will. Don't ask me why Humana is flaunting their post-apocalyptic wealth in the middle of a pandemic but nobody seemed overly concerned.
Anybody live someplace that has its own curious habits? Or does some of the same things happen where you live? Drop me a comment, I'd love to hear about it.
