Shall we dance?

As the title of this blog suggests, I am a native born Brit, English to be precise (well, half Irish, but now I'm just getting picky). Most English speaking cultures tend to be pretty similar due to their shared ancestry, but one of the things I have found myself coming up against again and again is the lack of ... well, Englishness here.

In England, we communicate through an elaborate dance of body language, gestures, grunts and assumptions. We have our little rituals and unspoken messages, and everyone understands them. We know that if we have an electrician checking the wiring, we must offer them a cup of tea. We know that we must change the subject if our conversation partner begins to look even slightly uncomfortable. We know when and how to form orderly queues, and we know that we are expected to take only our share and nothing more and to keep things "fair".

Speaking of queueing, George Mikes once said, "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one." He is absolutely right, and my friends here find it hilarious how twitchy and passive aggressively snippy I get when I see someone threatening to queue jump.

It's little social cues like this that don't exist here, and that trips me up more often than not. I am always secretly horrified when guests stomp around in dirty boots or kick them off in the middle of the floor, then head to our fridge to poke around and grab a soda without asking. I mean, I would never say anything -- that would be far too un-English -- and if I minded that much, I wouldn't invite them over. It just makes my inner Englishman petulantly wibble his stiff upper lip. How you behave at home and how you behave when a guest are two very different things in England, and the line is much more blurred here.

There is a tendency to be far less withdrawn and more openly critical here, which is both a blessing and a curse. If someone thinks something they will say it, sugar coating or not. But I still find myself looking for hidden messages and reading between the lines, forgetting that it doesn't really work like that in the US. It works in England because everyone does it, almost entirely subconsciously. Here? I am a dancer alone, and that is both amusing and frustrating to those I keep trying to tango with.

Is it easier with everyone saying what they think? Perhaps in theory. But I wonder if I shall ever get used to this upfront, unashamed honesty. Sometimes I long for my complex, silent, polite social waltz.