It doesn’t take much for our American cousins to find something to get overly emotional about. Here we see one of the USA’s most promising players accepting an Oscar after.. what? Sorry. Here we see one of the USA’s fully grown men in a post match conference. Somehow he manages to take his emotions in a clenched first, bring them to the press and release them in a flurry of raw cannon fodder for the English sarcasm.
In any English equivalent you’d be hard pressed to see a player with any more to give than a few grunts about the manager and the luck on the day. Even with the most particular of questions patrons of the footballing world tend to avoid giving too much away: about tactics, about their own character. Here’s your chance to talk to the world about your achievement as a team, as a unit and as a nation but no. He would much prefer to explain just how he has been affected personally. This great patriot has managed to wrestle with the beautiful game until it sits nicely beside him as an example of proof to him of “good in the world”. This is the same tournament in which Anelka approached Domenech with a less-than-polite remark about his mother and got sent home.
The the only crying that tends to happen on the correct side of the footballing pond is the average fan behind his television set when Mr Green unseats himself from the #1 spot. This is not to say that crying is an unhealthy way for a human being to act, not at all.
My point here is that our Western equivalents have much to give by way of sap. It seems even something as emotion-free as a van can bring an American woman to re-evaluate herself as a human being. In this story we follow the journey of an American mother and her battle with her identity as forced by her motor.
“That van is not who you are,” he said. “It’s where you are.”
I thought about what he said all night. Then I thought again of my sister, who is back in a sporty car now that her kids are older. Maybe her minivan wasn’t a sign that she had lost “it”; perhaps it was a sign that she had gained something else — a young family.
It seems that, as per my earlier example, our two nations are at loggerheads when it comes to deciding which opportunities are worthy of an emotional outcry. This story begins as a prime example of a time to hire a van. She struggles with the concept of becoming “mom” (despite having had children) and worries at the state of her family as it migrates to a larger vehicle. I’d be the first in line to explain van rental to her so that she might spend a bit of time changing her lifestyle in a synchronized manner.
“Here” I’d say. “Take the van – drive around until you’ve managed to devise your acceptance speech, and when the “look I had seen on my sister’s face years ago” comes back you’ll be in good stead to wow the press with a bubbling reply of both happiness and foreboding.” *facepalm*
It’s okay though – she finds her way around it all. After a rousing speech from her better half she manages to find herself as a person, as a mom, and as a woman. The next morning.
“Then I put my window down and let the breeze blow through my hair.”
?? AMERRRRRICA… ??
I just can’t tell any more. Do they do it on purpose for our enjoyment?! Is is all a stitch up? Are we to blame?!
