I am occasionally asked "Are you OK?". It happened a few times before I realized it's just a thing people say and not an indication that I looked unwell. I've never heard that particular greeting used by anyone with a Manchester accent, that would instead be "Ahluvyoualright?". Last night I heard someone mention the American habit of saying "Have a nice day!" as an example of our superficial cheer, or "How are you?" to which you are expected to answer positively as if this is a uniqely American habit. If anything, "Are you OK?" is even more aggressively DARING you to say anything other than "Uh yes? I think?".

At knitting, someone said that the Irish Travelers recently passed a few weeks at a nearby park. Their RVs are spotless inside but it's considered uncouth to have a bowel movement in the bathroom, so they go in the bushes. The local council had a grisly cleanup job when they left.

I was talking to a coworker about some of the words we prepped our children about before we left. The big ones were chips (french fries), crisps (potato chips), and pants (underwear, as opposed to "trousers"). He said that "pants" is fine but for girls "knickers" are more common. I thought about it for a moment and said Americans would really struggle with knickers. It sounds too much like The Bad Word. I tried it. It felt weird. It also seems slightly seedy to us, I told him. I tried it again and my body made an involuntary twitch of discomfort. "Let's move on to other topics, shall we," he said.