As an alien in this land, I stick out like the sorest finger among the natives, those who ancestry could be traced to just prior to the Declaration of Independence by the thirteen British colonies that lied along the Atlantic seaboard, that was back in the year 1776, July the fourth. I mean I distinctly stand out by the structure of my cranium, more distinctly by my way of speech, my demeanor, choice of dress among other things. Anyone from my part of the world is just the same though with varying degrees and the rest of the gang struggles to conform and look just like the native inhabitants (not the Indians, the ones who came from Europe and later Africa, forcibly). However, you are not in America until you have totally felt free, and have been assigned a number to ID you. This is your very livelihood and you have to fall into the debt grove and begin to weaken emotionally and grow physically and get enlightened by way of news and written books and other forms of media.
Life in this land is all about making it, it is a healthy capitalist society that thrives on consumerism. Making it is as easy as summoning the guts you have or not have. People can easily be swayed this or that way because everybody is constantly searching, searching for answers to life. For example many people struggle with obesity which eats away all their self confidence and men and women who are lazy to earn money via conventional ways prey on these and they sell to them plain useless products promising great results for their patients and they fill the media with miraculous results of their products or services and yes, they may work for some, but for the majority of the people, there is always a cry of foul. I mean anything goes so who cares, who does not? Characteristically, the health industry thrives a lot because there are lots of medical concerns in this land. Mental and other branches of medical assistance are on high demand because there is a high rate of illness, fortunately the medical experts are good at their jobs otherwise the death rates would be alarmingly high. Yes, there is AIDS too, just like in third world countries, difference is there is food for people to eat while ill such that the virus takes longer to eat up their patients and at the same time, medicine helps suppress its development. There is Patriotism, a lot of it and I would love every country under the sun to take a leaf out of the American page of loving one's country of birth. I am Patriotic too, not because I am a American by birth, but by Identity, I choose to identify with its constitution, all the way, no bones to chew with its components but with individuals who want to avoid it or warp it.
I love it here, because it is a multicultural society, a walk in the street you meet with hundred different cultures, Indo-America, Asian, African, Caribbean you name them, no wonder they believe there are aliens among us. You know you live in the land when during work or school break the majority of stories talked about are about pro-football, basketball, ice-hockey and people keep making references to Star Wars movies and reigning pop idols. You will be glad also to know that you still are in Arkansas, Texas, Georgia or Washington if a black person who is of Afro-American descent believes the police are out to get him and his fellas any moment and talks about his close friend or relative being put in jail or just coming out of penitentiary for a felony. Even more, some random person does not know the geographical features of the nation you come from or does not want to understand your diction. I always smile inwardly gleefully if that happens because I do pretend too that I do not understand his/her either.
Here, things like pets, trees and flowers have a better place in a home or in people's lives than other people. People never care about people at all. Some people actually get incensed if their pets vets do not handfeed them during their stay at the animal clinics. Others bequeath their entire life savings to their canine or feline friends., well that happens.
Only in America would people do things like pray to God to find their car keys, kids' ambitions are to be Batman when they grow up and people get to work late because their dog ate their alarm clock. It is in this part of the world where emotions of adults have been so tampered with that men cry openly about anything good or bad. Their women, well it is better to leave this unsaid. And the children, well the children are untouchable, not in a that way, dummy! that even I would slap you blue, I mean they are licenced to misbehave and run over parents by the child protection rules that strip the biological mother and father of a child their responsibility to discipline them. And yet lawmakers ignore the escalating levels of violence which I think this has a lot to do with. There is also the alarming drop in intelligence, in Math. According to a Bloomberg 2010 report, US teens were ranked 25th according to a Programme for International Student Assessment. In my part of the world, when I was a kid and in school, my peers got whoppings for bad grades as, now you just can not do that here, otherwise you will be planning a trip to sing-sing. Well, there is still time to turn things around and probably make the delinquents, both adults and the kids watch endless reruns of Alo Alo!
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