Here in the good ol' US of A, a lot of Americans think the way THEY do things is the way the rest of the world does things. Obviously, that ain't the case. Over the past few years, people on the popular site Reddit have shared the things they really can't quite understand about Americans, and of course, it's fascinating and often hilarious.
Here are the absolute best responses:
1. "You have a whole aisle in your supermarkets dedicated to just cereal."
2. "Red Solo cups are not just a Hollywood prop."
3. "The TV ads for prescription medication always get me."
4. "Everything is sweet. The beer was sweet, the bread, the traditional home-cooked meals, and the cheese."
5. "Asking 'How are you doing?' without wanting to know how anyone is doing."
6. "Yellow school buses are actually a thing in America. I honestly thought it was just a cartoon thing, but nope!"
7. "Your news. It’s over-sensationalized. I couldn’t believe it when I visited. Every news program seems much less like news and more like reality TV."
8. "There was a 24-hour pharmacy across the street from our apartment. Nothing shocking there, except that it ALSO sold booze and cigarettes. What the actual fuck, like..."
9. "The honking...I thought it was a movie stereotype, and then I went to New York."
10. "The huge number of flags everywhere."
11. "Aerosol cheese products."
12. "You guys have air conditioning in your house??? I was astonished."
13. "Severely bike-unfriendly roads/urban layouts. Everything is mostly designed for car traffic."
14. "That you have extremely violent shows on daytime TV, but you censor nudity. How will a boob harm you, but stabbing and blood splashing are normal?"
15. "The toilet water being so high. Wiping was terrifying!"
16. "People actually like and buy pickup trucks as their daily vehicle, even if their job doesn’t require them to haul anything at all."
17. "The Pledge of Allegiance."
18. "Baby showers. Here in Sweden, it is generally considered bad luck to give baby gifts before the baby is actually born. When the baby is born and the parents have gotten a few weeks alone with their newborn, they usually start inviting people to meet them, but one or a few at a time, and then you bring a gift."
19. "You can buy milk in gallon-sized containers."
20. "Dessert for breakfast — things like pancakes, syrup, fruit, sweet waffles, etc."
21. "Attack ads against political opponents, and ads for law firms or lawyers. These kinds of ads are illegal and considered unethical in our country."
22. "In the supermarket, you have like 100,000 different versions of each food. I had never seen so many different types of Oreos in my life."
23. "Talking really loudly in public places. Default volume of most Americans seems to be about 10 decibels higher than that of every other country's inhabitants."
24. "Black Friday. You spend Thanksgiving saying how grateful you are for what you have and then have a massive free-for-all over stuff you want."
25. "Paying for an ambulance."
26. "Wearing outdoor shoes inside the house."
27. "That you guys don't include taxes in your prices! I went to a convenience store to get a drink and was very confused when the price labeled was different at checkout."
28. "That you can get fired just like that and have no income."
29. "Identifying as your heritage instead of your nationality. If your great-great-great-grandparents moved from Norway to the USA, started a family, and generations later you were born, you are NOT Norwegian. Your ancestors were and you have a bit of Nordic blood in you, but you are still 100% American. Not Norwegian. Not 25% Irish, 10% Swedish, 3% Finnish, 17% Norwegian, 5% Danish — just plain American."
30. "Sending Christmas cards with a professional photo of your family on the front."
31. "Tipping. I had zero clue about tipping/how to tip, and I got a lot of dirty looks during my first solo trip there. I felt like shit after finding out."
32. "When traveling to another part of the world, an American will ALWAYS say the city and/or state they’re from, not the country. We’ll be at a hostel and someone will ask where everyone’s from: 'Denmark, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Canada...Sacramento, California.'”
33. "That our police cars are black and white. I dated a British guy, and he was in awe seeing the real-life black-and-whites. He thought they were only in movies."
34. "American kids eat straight sugar."
35. "That the waiter takes your credit card when you pay in an American restaurant. Here in Europe, you always keep the card with you when you pay."
36. "Seeing guns just hanging there like casual groceries in Walmart."
37. "On Halloween, masked people come to your house and knock on your door asking for candy. Mostly it's just packs of kids, but sometimes whole families."
38. "The idolization of politicians."
39. "Root beer. I was not prepared to sip on carbonated mouthwash. Why on earth is it called beer?"
40. "Drive-thru banks and even pharmacies. This is astonishing to me, as we simply do not have enough space for that sort of thing in the UK."
41. "The fact that you can drive for five hours in the United States and still be in the same place, more or less. If you drive for five hours in Europe, suddenly everyone’s talking funny and the cheese is different."
42. "There are security guards in the school halls, and some schools even have metal detectors at the entrance like the Transportation Security Administration at airports."
43. "You have those angry sinks* that chop shit."
44. "The concept of getting into university because you're good at a sport. I was chatting with an American guy online, and he told me he went to college on a 'lacrosse scholarship.' This was mind-boggling to me."
45. "Higher education can cost upward of $50,000 per year."
46. "The lack of annual paid time off from work. My uncle recently moved to the UK from the US and nearly passed out when he realized I get around 35 days of holiday every year."
47. "Just how empty parts of the nation are. Sure, we have dense cities, but we also have massive swaths of country with zero development, no roads, no structures, nothing."
48. "Huge gaps in the sides and bottoms of toilet stalls that people can see through."
49. "The drinking age being 21."
50. "The school sequence of freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. I have to translate this in my head every time I hear it."
51. "The obsession with high school. I have friends who say their best years were spent in high school, and I think that's really, really sad."
52. "The coupons. I was visiting a friend of mine who is from the States, and she bought a book of coupons. The discounts you could get were ridiculously fantastic!"
53. "Iced tap water that arrives at your table immediately when you sit down at a restaurant. It's such an amazing thing!"
54. "The fear of clowns. This is pretty much anecdotal, but the fear of clowns seems to be a VERY American thing, yet with other countries, the reaction goes from 'Meh' to 'I guess they're scary?'"
55. "What the hell is a pep rally?"
56. "Everything is loud. All the time. The TV ads, the billboards, the radio, the air conditioning. Everyone is trying to get heard in a country where being number one is the only acceptable goal. It's a loudness war to get to your brain, and it's exhausting."
57. "I'm from the UK, and I'd never seen refillable drinks before. I couldn't believe you could just have as much soda as you wanted and no one was going to think you were stealing."
58. "How much laws vary from state to state. It was really fun explaining to a British kid in high school that Massachusetts and New Hampshire have opposite laws on a lot of things despite the fact that their capitals are only 70 miles apart."
59. "The importance of high school sports. My high school built an entire complex for our soccer and football teams. But our choir department didn't have enough funding to have a single concert."
60. "Chanting 'USA!' for no apparent reason."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.