5 Things My Danish Husband is Scared Of in America
If a gun doesn’t kill you, then a side-effect certainly will
There are a lot of scary things in America, according to my Danish husband, and COVID is only one of them. In his short three and a half years in States, he has seen it all: from the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests to the presidential election madness and the dysfunction of the U.S. government agencies. It’s a rude awakening for an immigrant from one of the most peaceful places in the world.
Here are some of the things that my hubby from Denmark finds both scary and funny in his newly adopted country.
1. Side effects
If there’s one thing that puzzles my husband even more than the sheer volume of medical ads on American TV it’s the bizarre messages that come at the end of each commercial, warning you that you may just end up dead after you take the medication.
“Is this a joke?” he asked me when he saw such a commercial for the first time.
I assured him that potential side effects are no laughing matter in America.
“Then this is the worse piece of advertisement I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continued.
I realized that he was right and that medical TV ads in the U.S. are just that — the worst kind of advertisement anyone has ever seen. It’s depressing enough that there are so many of them that it makes you wonder if America is a very ill nation (or so they make you believe). And yet they top it off with a great dose of anxiety and death threats.
“The weirdest part is that Americans still consume more medication than anyone else in the world,” my husband concluded.
We’ve indeed become so used to the insanity of legal warnings in the U.S. that we don’t pay any attention to the messages they convey.
2. Crossing the street
Coming from a going-everywhere-by-bike country of Denmark, my husband is still learning to co-exist with the car culture of the U.S. The number of cars, lanes, exits, and rules that are only there to be broken are overwhelming to a Northern European from a tiny spot on the map with huge respect for bicyclists. But there’s one thing that bugs him the most.
“It’s not that people don’t drive in Denmark, it’s that they respect those who don’t,” my husband complained.
Whether you commute by car, bike, or on foot in Denmark, you’re not likely to be threatened by a moving vehicle. Whereas in the city of Los Angeles, where we currently reside, pedestrians and, God forbid, bicyclists get no respect whatsoever.
“I feel like if I don’t get into a car accident on my way home, I’ll get run over on my walk to the supermarket later,” my husband worried.
On top of that, he observed, road rules seem to be more of a suggestion in America (while in Denmark, any rule, car-related or not, is observed religiously). This creates an every-man-for-himself mentality wherever you go, on and off-road.
3. Biking (see above)
If anything gets an American driver angrier than a pedestrian it’s a bicyclist. Sure, a lot has been done in recent years to improve biking infrastructure in large American cities, but drivers’ attitudes towards cyclists remained the same.
“Drivers in America own the road. And they’re not about to start sharing it with a pity cyclist,” my husband concluded.
He still rides a bike occasionally but never in a carefree Danish way.
4. Warning labels
As scared as he is of guns, my husband is even more concerned with the number of warning labels visible on every corner, piece of furniture, or drink in the U.S.
“Everywhere you go you’re warned of a possibility of an immediate death,” he noticed.
Our old building complex in Los Angeles had a hot tub with an enormous sign warning that there was no lifeguard on duty. My husband laughed when he saw it for the first time. Since then, he’s never missed an opportunity to poke fun at such serious but obvious statements.
“Just everyday things you see in America are funnier than any sitcom,” my husband pointed out.
Truly, we’re so used to anxiety-endorsing messages all around us we forget that to a newcomer this sort of existence borders on insanity.
“Thanks to your litigation system, an average American is reduced to an idiot incapable of handling a hot beverage,” my husband complained.
He has a point. Why would you bother to think for yourself if you’re always encouraged to blame someone else in case anything goes wrong?
“If you treat people like fools, they become fools,” my husband concluded.
5. Trespassing
Yet another unexpected thing to scare my husband in America is stepping onto someone’s lawn, especially when we travel outside the city.
He arrived in the U.S. with a firm belief that nothing gets an American angrier than strangers stepping onto their territory. So whenever my husband sees a “No Trespassing” sign, he rushes by, even if no one is watching.
“There’s something about this country that makes me feel like I might get shot at any moment,” my husband laughs when I point out his exaggerated behavior.
It’s true that while we as a nation have little respect for rules in general, when it comes to our private space, or telling others how to live their lives, we suddenly become sticklers for law and order. Just try walking onto someone’s lawn in America or let your dog run off-leash and see what happens.
Coming from perhaps the most rule-abiding society on Earth, my husband is puzzled by such inconsistency.
“American roads are like the Wild West where laws don’t apply to anyone, but accidentally set a foot onto someone’s private property and you’ll have yourself arrested,” he contemplated.
We’re definitely a country of extremes, as my confused Danish husband is beginning to understand.
Jokingly and not, my husband still looks at America with suspicion of an outsider trying to test the boundaries. I often find myself explaining to him how to act “like an American,” while he helps me see the differences between our country and the rest of the civilized world. It’s a journey but an interesting one at that.
All of his concerns are very valid. I've lived in this country for three quarters of a century, and I've seen these absurdities creep in. As a child I could ride my bike all over the neighborhood, without my mother worrying about where I was. I spent hundreds of hours at a nearby creek, learning all the various creatures that lived in it. There was no lifeguard, or usually anyone other than other kids around. I'm sure I fell in more than once, but managed to survive. Life here might be a good deal better if we took Shakespeare's suggestion of killing all the lawyers.