Name: I'm a Stranger Here Myself
ISBN: 9780786220021

Bill Bryson

Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Bekki

Now I would hate for you to think that my loyality with respect to postal delivery systems can be cheaply bought with a chocolate twirl doughnut and a Styrofoam Cup of coffee, but in fact it can.

Much as I admire Britain's Royal Mail, it has never once offered me a morning snack, so I have to tell you that as I strolled home from my errand, wiping crumbs from my face, my thoughts toward American life in general and the U.S. postal service in particular were pretty incomparably favourable.

I did a foolish thing the other afternoon. 

I went into one of our local cafés and seated myself without permission. 

You don't do this in America, but I had just had what seemed like a salient and important thoughts (namely, "There is always a little more toothpaste in the tube - always. Think about it") and I wanted to jot it down before it left my mind. 

Anyway, the place was practically empty, so I just took a table near the door. 

After a couple of minutes, the hostess came up to me and said in a level tone "I see you've seated yourself." 

"Yup," I replied proudly, "Dressed myself too." 

The other day I called my computer helpline, because I needed to be made to feel ignorant by someone much younger than me...

I decided to clean out the refrigerator the other day. We don't usually clean out our fridge - we just box it up every four or five years and send it off to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta with a note to help themselves to anything that looks scientifically promising - but we hadn't seen one of the cats for a few days and I had a vague recollection of having glimpsed something furry on the bottom shelf, toward the back (Turned out to be a large piece of gorgonzola)

It was because she was English, of course. She didn't really understand the rich, unrivaled possibilities for greasiness and goo that the American diet offers. 

I longed for artificial bacon bits, melted cheese in shade of yellow unknown to nature, and creamy chocolate fillings, sometimes all in the same product.

I wanted food that squirts when you bite into it or plops onto your shirt front in such gross quantities that you have to rise very, very carefully from the table and sort of limbo over to the sink to clean yourself up.

"What's that?" my wife asked in the special tone of voice with which she often addresses me in retail establishments. 

I didn't have time to explain. "Breakfast for the next six months" I panted as I sprinted past "and don't even think about putting any of it back and getting granola"

And what exactly is a toaster strudel? Who cares? It was coated in sugar and looked drippy. I grabbed an armload. I admit I got a little carried away - but there was so much and I had been away so long. 

It was the breakfast pizza that finally made my wife snap. She looked at the box and said "No."

"Your not bringing home something called breakfast pizza. I will let you have" - she reached into the cart for some specimen samples - "root beer buttons and toaster strudel and..." She lifted out a packet she hadn't noticed before. "What's this?" 

I looked over her shoulder. "Microwave Pancakes", I said.

"Microwave Pancakes", she repeated, but with less enthusiasm. 

I have never had a garbage disposal before, so I have been learning it's tolerances through a process of trial and error. 

Chopsticks give perhaps the liveliest response (this is not recommended, if course, but there comes a time with every piece of machinery when you just HAVE to see what it can do), but cantaloupe rinds make the richest, throatiest sound and result in less "down time". 

Coffee grounds in quantity are the most likely to provide a satisfying "Vesuvius effect" though for obvious reasons it is best not to attempt this difficult feat until your wife has gone out for the day and to have a mop and stepladder standing by. 

The most exciting event with a garbage disposal, of course, is when it jams and you have to reach in and unclog it, knowing that at any moment it might spring to life and abruptly convert your arm from a useful grasping tool into a rubber. 

Don't try to tell me about living in the edge. 

One night after we had been there about a month, I was reading unusually late when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the cat come in. Only here's the thing: the cat was with me already. 

I looked again. It was a skunk. Moreover, it was between me and the only means of exit.

I have particularly vivid memories of Iowa summers because my father was the last person in the Midwest to buy an air conditioner. 

He thought they were unnatural (He thought anything that cost more than $ 30 was unnatural).

I was talking about this to one of my older children the other day. 

She listened attentively, even sympathetically, then said a sad thing. 

"Dad," she told me, "you need to understand that people don't want the smell of a dead horse when they go to the movies." 

But if you ask me, they don't know what they are missing.

 well great now I wanna befriend a skunk 

After that, for two summers, I put a little food out regularly and the skunk always came to collect it. This year it hasn't been back. 

There has been a rabies epidemic among small mammals. (...) Apparently this happens every fifteen years or so as part of a natural cycle. 

In a year or so, the population will recover and I may be able to adopt another. 

I hope so because the one thing about being a skunk is that you don't have a lot of friends. 

No, you may keep the sea, as far as I am concerned, and every drop of water in it. 

So when last weekend my wife suggested that we take a drive to the ocean, I put my foot down and said "Never - absolutely not!", which is of course why we ended up, three hours later, at Kennebuck Beach in Maine.

In America, the big eating holiday is, of course, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a great holiday - probably the very best holiday in America, it you ask me. 

(For the benefit of those unacquainted with it's provenance, Thanksgiving commemorates the first harvest feast at which the pilgrims sat down with the Indians to thank them for all their help and to tell them, "Oh, and by the way, we've decided we want the WHOLE country.") 

It is a great holiday because you don't have to give gifts or send cards or do anything but eat until you begin to look like a balloon that has been left on a helium machine for too long. 

For reasons I cannot begin to understand, when I was about eight years old my parents gave me a pair of skiers for Christmas.

I went outside, strapped them on and stood in a racing crouch, but nothing happened.

This is because there are no hills in Iowa.

So we returned to the beach. By the time we got there, some hours later, I discovered that everyone had gone off for a swim and there was only one half-eaten sandwich left. 

I sat on a towel and nibbled at the sandwich. 

"Oh look, Mummy" said number two daughter gaily when they emerged from the surf a few minutes later, "Daddy's eating the sandwich the dog had." 

"Tell me this isn't happening" I whispered. 

"Don't worry, dear" my wife said soothingly, "it was an Irish setter. They're very clean" 

I have been watching a movie called Magnificent Obsession lately(...) it is one of those gorgeously mediocre movies they made in abundance in the early 1950s when people would still watch almost anything. (...) Jane has a 10 year old daughter played by one of those pigtailed, revolting precocious child actors of the fifties that you just ache to push out a high window.

I may not have all the details right because I have not been watching this movie in order, or even on purpose. I have been watching it because one of our cable channels has shown it at least 54 times in the last two months, and I keep coming across it while trawling around looking for something actual to watch.

(...) I'd love to go on, but I must leave you now. I notice that Magnificent Obsession is about to start (...) I keep thinking that if I watch long enough Lloyd Nolan will shove that little girl out an upstairs window.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I have gone looking for the rest room in a movie theater, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door.

Idk why but this made me laugh so hard I got tears in my eyes 

Once on an airplane, I leaned over to tie a shoelace just at the moment that the person in the seat ahead of me threw his seat back into full recline, and I found myself pinned helplessly in the crash position. 

It was only by clawing the leg of the man sitting next to me that I managed to get myself freed. 

In order to make the world a better place, the following rules will take force with immediate effects across the planet: 

 is no longer allowed to be stupid and slow. You must choose one or the other. 

2.People who wear articles of clothing on which the manufacturers name or logo is prominently displayed must also wear a badge saying "Yes, I am an idiot."

4.(...) Anyone who teaches the front of a line and says "now what do I want?" and purses his lips carefully if drums his fingers on his chin while studying the ordering options as if for the first time will be taken outside and shot.

6. Martha Stuart is, with immediate effect, illegal.

24. In a public rest room, when you have washed your hands and then discover there is only a hot air dryer, that is very illegal.

28. All Americans will appreciate irony. Britons will understand that two ice cubes in a drink is not nearly enough. 

Thank you for helping to make the world a better place. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Even if not all of the topics were that interesting to me, the chapters are never longer than 4-5 pages, so it's changing all the time + stays interesting :)

I love Bill Bryson <3 

Even if not all of the topics were that interesting to me, the chapters are never longer than 4-5 pages, so it's changing all the time + stays interesting :)

notes on returning to America after 20 years away

I'm a stranger here myself

Laura Mauler

At first each entry was fun and funny to me, and as it went along (that is to say, the longer he was back in the USA) they were less funny and more complaining. This book was my breakfast read, which meant I only read one or two entries a day and ended up having to renew the book twice. Then I stopped reading it in the mornings because it was no longer starting my day with a smile, and when it came time to renew it again I just didn't bother.

Laura

When I went on my study abroad to London I was assigned to read Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island" and it mentioned that he wrote a book when he came back with his columns about readjusting to American life. I figured when I came back to America it would be a great thing to read. I liked the book, although I think part of why I liked it was because I was coming back from London and could relate to a lot of what he wrote. Its split into great small chapters to read over time

I'm a Stranger Here Myself Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away