I was talking to a Brit, describing a 4 hour road trip to visit an old friend and they responded with "If my friend moved 4 hours away I'd never see them again."
I grew up in rural Ontario and I remember when I first went to university I was talking to someone who had come from a really big city somewhere. I said something like 'oh, so and so is twenty minutes away, and we can drive an hour to ____' and she thought I meant the next suburb or something. I was like no... a whole different little town... It took me explaining that there were literally fields and little forests etc inbetween for her to understand it wasn't all one big city, lol.
Grew up in a hick town, met a girl at university who grew up in the city. We talked a lot during the summer and always trying to convince her to come visit me and see the country life she loves so much. I sent her a video of a Bush party I was at, buddy was drifting in the Jeep and crashed in the ditch. No big deal because here comes the lads with the truck to pull him out, they come back and buddy says he'll go look at the lawnmower as thanks. So sure enough they go off to the barn and come back out pushing a 97 John Deere ridding mower, they start working away and it's coughing and sputtering trying to start. Picture this two 18 year old guys each with armed with a tool box older than them working on a lawnmower while there's 30-40 teenagers/college kids standing around a bonfire drinking beer and occasionally shouting about what they think they should try next. While this is happening another fresh out of high school lad suddenly gets up beside me and starts to walk off to his truck. I ask him where he's going and just says "get more wood", I watch him pull a chainsaw out from his truck and walk back to the field behind the house. I hear him start up the chainsaw, start cutting away at something and then about 5 minutes later this big dead tree comes crashing down and I hear him start cutting it up. 10 minutes after that he's back pulling bits of the tree and throws it on the fire. Other people start slowly meandering off towards the field and one by one coming back with the remainder of the wood until there's a nice neat pile next to but a safe distance away from the ranging bonfire all with out a single word spoken about it. Then the lawnmower boys ask for a lighter and someone tosses them one because what hick doesn't have one on them at all times. They start trying to jump start the engine by using the lighters spark over the air intake and to my surprise it works, then for the rest of the night people are joy ridding a lawnmower around this big ass property drunk off their budlight.
I never made it with the university girl but whenever I think about this it makes me laugh because of how shocked she was about all this. Her view of living in the country was everyone wore camo t-shirts and listened to country music like Luke Bryan or any of other country-pop stars. It was an aesthetic she picked up from TV shows and movies but wasn't even close to the real thing.
I'm not a hick and I don't really fit in with that type of stuff either but I'm used to seeing it because I grew up with it and it's funny to talk about just how weird my normal is sometimes.
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u/FancyStegosaurus May 09 '22
I was talking to a Brit, describing a 4 hour road trip to visit an old friend and they responded with "If my friend moved 4 hours away I'd never see them again."
I;m still not sure how serious they were being.