4 Things Foreigners Will Never Understand About America

It's not that other countries don't have lawns, or that Australians only seed their gardens with spider eggs or something. But with few exceptions, it's only Americans that surround their homes with lawn-oceans so big that they need to own a special type of car with razor blades attached to it just to keep the stuff trimmed. Where I come from, you own a riding mower if you just inherited a soccer field and don't know what to do with it yet. Here, keeping a razor-car around is completely normal, and so is spending half your weekend driving one.

And in America, lawns are hardly ever surrounded by fences or hedges or a barbed-wire demilitarized zone, like they would be in normal countries. Instead, you and your neighbor's lawns must fade into each other like the memories of the shots of cheap whiskey you drank last night. Then your good American neighbor will inevitably mow his lawn right up to the edge of your property, leaving your property's much longer grass sitting there like a topographic map of your own failure.

Why Is It Like That?

Lawns were first brought to America in the 19th century, but it was a bunch of turf-crazy suburban planners that really caused this country to embrace them. These planners began urging people to build gardens with lawns that touched their neighbors: unlike the British upper-classes, who surrounded their gardens with "inhospitable brick walls" to keep out their poverty-stricken neighbors, Americans were told to combine their front yards as a sign of New World egalitarianism. Perhaps because talk radio hadn't been invented yet, this strangely communistic idea took off, and Americans have been mingling their outdoor carpet-gardens ever since.

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If Lenin were alive, he'd totally be out mowing that shit.

But to be fair, "not being like the British" isn't the only reason a person might want to possess a huge fucking lawn. The stuff is great for American activities like backyard football and barbecues, and, apparently, the smell of a freshly mowed lawn makes people feel relaxed and happy. Maybe that contributes to the ...

Americans probably don't realize how crazy optimistic they are until they're forced to hang around gloomy foreigners, who are clearly all just miserable because because they don't realize how awesome it is to be born into the greatest, most wonderful nation on Earth. While Americans' optimism about the country's future is declining, people in this country remain incredibly optimistic on a personal level. Sure, the environment and the economy are going down the drain, but everyone somehow figures they'll be OK, regardless.

Why Is It Like That?

The attitude reflects the continuing reign of New Thought, a religious movement that started in America in the 19th century and is still madly influential today. New Thought emphasizes positive thinking and self-empowerment: it is your thoughts and attitudes, not luck or external circumstances, that make you healthy and rich. It's still popping up today in things like the "Prosperity Gospel" strain of American Christianity, which teaches believers that God will make them happy and rich if they really, really want him to.

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"I want you all to get huge mortgages. Go crazy with those things."

New Thought has its benefits: people who believe they're in control of their life, rather than at the mercy of outside elements, do tend to be more well-adjusted. But it can also lead to dumb shit, like blaming people for their own misfortunes (which, after all, are in their control). It's nice to be around positive people, but it isn't so nice to be told that you were bitten by that shark because you attracted it with your negative self-talk.

Obviously, things are different in America. The college-football Rose Bowl game was the fifth most valuable sporting brand in the country in 2007, worth more at the time than the Kentucky Derby and the NBA finals. College basketball is also ridiculously huge. Americans just love watching awkward adolescents doing sports with each other, even though very few of these players go on to have professional careers, and even fans admit that college athletes just aren't as good as professional ones.

Why Is It Like That?

Mostly, it's because of geography. America is just so damn big that wide swathes of the country have traditionally been left without enough professional sports teams, particularly in the Southern states. In fact, 24 U.S. states have no major sports teams at all.

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"How else am I supposed to fill the empty void where my soul should be? Heroin?"

College sports grew up to fill this geographical gap. Compared to the 30 teams in the NBA, for example, there are hundreds of college basketball teams to choose from, and that really helps when you don't want to drive 300 miles just to sit in a stadium surrounded by people with next-state-over accents.

And while they're at those college games, Americans can eat some deep-fried chocolate-covered pork rinds, to celebrate their ...

Yes, other countries have unhealthy food. Foreigners might eat deep-fried Mars bars as a novelty, or overstuff themselves in breakfast-eating contests. But those populations don't unashamedly, publicly glorify this stuff in their everyday eating lives. Instead, they behave like normal people and eat their whole-sticks-of-butter-dipped-in-Nutella at home. Alone. While crying.

Americans, on the other hand, waltz into public spaces and order Meat Mountains or Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers in front of every damn person there, without so much as an embarrassed glance around them or some nervous vomiting. It's disgusting. It's irresponsible. It's glorious.

Why Is It Like That?

I think it's partly about good old American freedom. The more health-food activists and Michael Bloomberg fight against America's 20,000-calorie meals and instruct everyone to eat lettuce-wrapped carrot sticks instead of pizza crusts made out of cheeseburgers, the more Americans do the opposite, just out of spite.

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"Restrict soda sizes? That's it, now I'm going to go eat a whole cat. Just a whole fucking cat."

Take the Nevada burger restaurant called the Heart Attack Grill. The owner is constantly running gimmicks to convince you that you shouldn't eat his restaurant's unhealthy meals, serving up dishes like the "Triple Bypass Burger" and offering free meals to anyone over 350 pounds. I'm sure you could write a book about the psychology of running a business while also claiming your food will kill your customers, but one thing's for sure: his customers love it. Two unofficial spokesmen for the restaurant have already dropped dead, one of them at age 29, and at least two patrons have collapsed at the restaurant while consuming fare like the Heart Attack Grill's 10,000-calorie burger. Because fuck you, guy who's advising me not to eat his food because it will kill me! You can't tell me what to do.

And maybe this is also a symptom of this country's boundless, wonderful, shark-denying optimism. Americans are so cheerful about their future in general, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch that many of them could think that a lifetime of consuming Double Downs won't be detrimental to their health, because meh, everything will magically work itself out just fine. They might be wrong, but you've gotta admire that attitude.

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Above: America.

C. Coville has a Twitter, a Tumblr, and a really big fucking lawn. You should visit two of those things.

For more from C. Coville, check out 4 Modern Countries With Surprisingly Backward Technology and 5 Innocent Gestures That Make You Look Like a Dick Overseas.