We just finished a class on Missions, and a mentoring unit on Evangelism. Sometimes I feel like such a foreigner in my own culture, that the idea of trying to reach beyond that is really stressful. The very idea of cross-cultural ministry exhausts me. I'm still trying to find a place where I feel at home myself. I think everyone has a right to be eccentric if they want to be, but I hate being eccentric by mistake!
Some of this is attributable to growing up without watching TV. I know all the arguments pro and con, but in my experience, it left me without the set of common experiences that all Americans assume that everyone else knows.
I remember one time when I riding the train doing the crossword puzzle. I had filled in all the 'across' answers for one corner, but I still didn't understand the 'down' clue. So I mentioned to my friend Pat (a foreign-born co-worker), "I don't know what 'MRED' is. " I pronounced it: EM-Red. She glanced over at the paper and patiently explained to me that "TV's talking horse" was 'Mr Ed' ". Oh.
Sometimes I pick things up second hand. I can hum that little theme from the 'Twilight zone', even though I have no idea what the show was about, and have never actually heard the real theme, only other people humming it. I've learned that you hum this when you think something odd is happening. And then there is also that ominous theme that means something bad is going to happen: dum da-dum dum DUM. I have no idea what that is actually from, but I know how to use it. I can understand references to 'Leave it to Beaver' and 'Father knows best'. I've mainly learned these from context, usually in sermons, describing how society has changed in the past few decades.
I'm probably the only person in New York who wasn't a Seinfeld fan. So when I innocently started relating a true lunchtime story about this place in New York where the guy abuses you when you stand in line waiting to buy his soup, it must have been inevitable that the person I was talking to thought I was poorly relating the episode of the Soup Nazi, and tried to correct me, by adding details that hadn't actually happened that day. Eventually we straightened it out. And by the way, the guy really does scream at you to "step to the left", and people stand on line in the rain and take his abuse.
And I've never understood why people do that thing with their fingers behind someone's head when you snap a picture. What does it mean? Why does everyone think it's funny? Why am I the only 45 year old in America who is not in on the joke? Last week I noticed that when people gesture as if they are holding a telephone, they stick out their pinky and thumb, to represent the phone itself. How does everyone except me know that this is the 'right' way to symbolize a telephone? I hold my hand curved together as if I'm holding a phone. Where did that thumb and pinky thing start? Where do I buy the secret manual that explains all of this?
And lets not even get into how old I was when I found out that when people mention Spock, they don't mean the pediatrician.
One friend of mine actually suggested that I needed a course of remedial TV watching. However, I have to confess that I'm just not quite interested enough. It's sort of like cleaning my apartment. I like the idea of it being clean, but not quite enough to prioritize my time to work on it. I mean, can you imagine me telling my boss that instead of staying for the whole meeting I have to go home because it's an emergency and I have to watch Nickelodeon?
I've come up with a good technique for learning about some the big shows now. I watch one episode. Frankly, that's all Survivor was worth. But I saw the immunity challenge, and the tribal council, and will now understand the reference if someone says "the Tribe has spoken". And I watched a few episodes of Fear Factor. It was sort of addicting, but finally I had to ask myself what in the world I was watching for, and I had no answer, so I stopped. But at least I will now recognize "Fear is not a factor for you". And I attended a kinship party where we watched the final episode of Seinfeld. I couldn't quite understand what it had to do with kinship, but it was a highly efficient way of catching up, because it had flashbacks to many prior shows.
But all in all, I can't believe how much of a foreigner I feel in my own country. It reminds me of an old science fiction story, in which there was an alien who was trying to pass as a human being. He had studied human behavior, so he could try to fake it. And he was finally caught out because he failed to do something that was instinctive for gentlemen wearing suits -- he didn't have that little knack of hitching up the knees just as he sat down, to avoid stretching out the crease. I feel like the alien who watches to try to copy 'normal' behavior, but who will eventually get caught.
Keep watching my blog for entries about being a foreigner in my own country. Food and movies and music and religion and weddings will make great categories.
P.S. I do actually watch some TV now, if I happen to be home: 60 minutes; ER; 20/20; Everybody loves Raymond; Judging Amy.
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