GROWING UP, AMERICANS WERE LIKE UNICORNS: mythical, inhabiting our TVs and movies, but you never actually met one. At intermediate, Mr Ferguson amazed us by presenting the class with a genuine American sailor on leave from the Vietnam War. Wow!
I tend to like Americans: the ones I’ve met have been fun, friendly, intelligent people – and they sound like my TV, which is delightful. I know there must be duds, but I don’t think they are the ones that travel down here to explore New Zealand – the duds must stay behind in the US and create those weird politics and policies that puzzle me and the rest of the world.
For a start, Americans smile. They must teach it at school. Unlike New Zealanders, Americans will flash their teeth at you. As they approach, they resemble their 1950s cars with big chrome grills. Beautiful orthodontics. I recall going straight from North America to the Netherlands on a trip, and the contrast was amazing. The Americans all grinned at me like I was some long-lost relative, whereas the dear Dutch walked the streets of Amsterdam looking like their dog had died that morning.
By the way, I’m not saying the Dutch are unfriendly; it’s just they don’t feel the need to semaphore bonhomie with their face all the time. My Russian tutor (yes, I tried learning Russian once) told me that, growing up, they were instructed, “Don’t smile at nothing. People will think you are an idiot.”
So smiling is very much a culturally modified thing, with a range of international styles, with our North American friends right up at the grinniest end of the spectrum– and I like that. Apparently, I have a tendency to scowl and look grumpy. And when I do attempt to be American and smile, the feedback I’ve had is that it seems like I am plotting something evil. However, I do notice smiling alters my psychology –
I tend to like the people more that I am smiling at. I even do it on my own when I am recording voiceovers in a lonely little recording booth. Somehow, the smile translates into the vocals.
So I recommend it. Smile. The Russians you meet may think you’re addled in the head, but I think in general you’ll find it does something good to your social interactions.
Another thing I like is that Americans generally have very good manners. Admittedly, I stood in a queue for a rental car in California, and the man in front of me yelled he was going to get a gun and come back and shoot the sales assistant because he hadn’t got the upgrade to a Cadillac that he was expecting. That is not good manners. (I saw a nasty pro-gun sticker that said, “An armed society is a polite society”, which I think is appalling: it’s a terrified society). But in general, Americans have manners to navigate most social situations: greetings, interactions with strangers, and handling embarrassments.
At a family meal with Americans I was charmed by the constant to-and-fro of pleases and thank-yous and you’re-welcomes. The daughter of the family had brought her boyfriend (not me) to meet the family for the very first time. He cut into his food, and his dinner plate shattered. If that had happened in New Zealand, several at the table would have had coronaries from embarrassment. But this guy, and the family, took it in their stride with humour and easy good manners, and I don’t think it was because they thought the boyfriend had a gun.
So Americanize your manners – I think it works.
One more thing Americans do is have big goals, big dreams, and they don’t mind telling you about them … and people don’t mock them for it. In America, you can dream big, and it’s admired, not mocked, as I think it often is in NZ. If you asked a young person in NZ what they want to be and they say, CEO of the company they’ve just started working for, or an All Black, or a movie star, we’d be polite enough not to smirk in their face, but we’d mock them behind their back.
I don’t think Americans come packaged with any more potential than Kiwis, but I think they will achieve more than us (as their country has historically done), because of that confidence that comes from putting their dreams out there and going for them. That’s definitely something I can’t do yet. I’ll get to it after I’ve got the smiling and manners stuff mastered.
AFTER DECADES STUDYING FAMILY LIFE, JOHN NOW FOCUSES ON THE ‘PRIME-TIME’ ISSUES OF LATER MIDDLE AGE. CHECK HIM OUT ON JOHNCOWAN.CO.NZ – ESPECIALLY IF YOU NEED SOME WRITING, EVENT SPEAKING, VIDEOS MADE, OR SOMEONE TO HAVE A COFFEE WITH.
