Weird Everyday Things My Danish Husband Will Never Understand in America
"5 makeup tips for older women" and other bizarre things
I spent the last three years teaching my husband from Denmark to adapt to the American ways of doing things. Yet moving anywhere in your 40s is a challenge, let alone moving from one the happiest places on Earth to this confusing and complicated country of ours.
From the American healthcare system to DMV offices and from the unbearable bureaucracy to fax machines — no detail went unnoticed by my husband.
Here are some of the everyday things he still can’t figure out and, probably, never will.
Phone numbers spelled out in letters
There’s certainly something theatrical about American billboards. And no billboard will be complete without a phone number spelled out in letters. My husband has no idea what those mean.
“What the hell is 1–800-WE-BUY-HOUSES?” he asked me when he first saw such an ad.
I had to explain to him that every letter stood for a number.
“But there are three or four letters for each number?” my husband stared at his phone.
It got complicated quickly.
“This is one of those American things I’ll never understand,” he concluded.
Prices for services
While relatively high American salaries might be something to boast about, the expenses we endure in our country are also unforgivably high, as any visiting European will confirm. One of the many ways we get scammed in the U.S., according to my husband, is by overpaying for basic services.
It started with the monthly internet — my husband couldn’t believe we were going to pay fifty dollars a month (and that was only until the promotion ran out!) for what turned out to be very basic WI-FI.
“So people spend eighty bucks a month to have a slow internet connection and they have no idea it’s a rip-off?” he asked me. I confirmed that we just didn’t know any better.
In my husband’s home country of Denmark (known for its high prices and taxes), the fastest internet service would cost about thirty-forty dollars a month.
When I tried adding cable to our bill, my husband was so appalled by the price I never brought it up again.
The cell phone service was no better. Upon discovering how much companies like Verizon and AT&T charged, my husband searched high and low for an alternative and found it in the name of Mint, a budget phone provider (with coverage to match).
These days we enjoy a weak cell phone signal at a price that is still more expensive than any phone service in Europe.
“I never felt poorer than when I came to the U.S.!” my husband laughed.
Hundreds of (useless) cable channels
If the high price of American cable service wasn’t enough, what finished my husband off was the number of (useless) channels it provided.
Even though we only enjoy cable in hotels, it’s enough for my husband to get the picture. Discovering the Guide button on the TV remote was exciting at first, then overwhelming and, finally, annoying.
“So to justify their ridiculous prices, these cable companies throw in 500 filler channels?” my husband wondered. He was onto something.
Here are just a few cable programs we found across different channels during our last hotel stay:
“Do you owe IRS money?”
“Cleaning secrets revealed!”
“5 makeup tips for older women”
“Robot cleans your house for you!”
You can’t make this stuff up.
“If there are people actually watching these programs, it’s very sad,” my husband concluded.
Medical TV commercials
Once my husband got over the hundreds of stupid channels, he discovered something even more annoying in the world of cable television — commercials. The sheer volume of those was what struck him at first. Then it was the poor quality and cheesy content of so many.
“Are people really buying this shit?” he asked me. I could only imagine.
But something else caught my husband’s attention: no matter what channel we picked, the majority of commercials seemed to relate to the medical field.
“It seems like America is a very sick nation,” my husband noticed.
“Or so they make people believe,” he added.
It’s true that if you watch American TV long enough, you’ll learn that, seemingly, there’s a countless number of illnesses people suffer from in the U.S.
“I think the message here is clear,” my husband concluded, “If you’re not sick at least a little bit, there’s something wrong with you.”
No wonder taking some kind of medication is a norm in the U.S. You only need to watch TV for one evening to find out why.
How hard it is to find fresh food
Never a shopping trip goes by without my husband returning home to complain about the quality of food he’s been looking at. Our local Trader Joe’s, in particular, has a tendency to sell produce (and bread!) that starts to rot before it leaves supermarket shelves.
“You’d think one could find fresh vegetables in California,” my husband pointed out, surprised.
While Denmark may not be the best place in the world to find delicious fruit (hello, Spain!), you don’t find mold in your shopping basket either. And all across Europe, Denmark included, you’ll find freshly baked and cheap bread, which turned out to be impossible in the U.S.
“The bread situation in America is very sad,” my husband concluded as he gave up trying to find a fresh loaf under five dollars.
Instead, we comfort ourselves with toasted bagels.
Cashback
When my husband went shopping at Target for the first time, the cashier asked him if he wanted cash back.
He stared at her blankly: “A what?”
“Cashback,” she insisted, “Do you want any?”
“Sure,” my husband answered reluctantly, thinking he was being offered some kind of a promotion.
After the cashier offered him a twenty-dollar bill, my husband walked away both confused and amused.
Even though in Denmark, cash is almost entirely a thing of the past, he’s getting used to this “new” American way of living.
Getting to know America has been a journey of many discoveries for my husband. We laugh and we cry but we’re still here.