Culture Shock

I have lived in Jamaica, Yemen, Tanzania, and London. I have spent a great deal of time in Kenya, Uganda, Jordan, and Palestine. I have dated, been in relationships, even done both in multiple languages. I have taught all kinds of students, eaten all kinds of foods, even managed to listen to lots of different kinds of music. I have a Master's degree in Multicultural Education and I have published manuals on cultural diversity. I thought I was ready for anything, inoculated against any type of cultural shock. And true to form, the only place I suffered it was in the place I least expected it. Ooooklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain...........

I left Indiana to go to Oklahoma for college. I knew it was a good distance away, and that there might be some differences, but hey, it was still America. Thirty something years later, I think I might have been wrong about that. As I boarded the plane, my expectations were limited to cowboys, Indians, howdy, and heat. I didn't know I would have to learn a new language.

When I got off the plane, I walked past a very big man in a too tight shirt standing behind the counter of a fast food counter. He was the biggest man I had ever seen. My stare, and possibly gaping mouth, caught his eye and he smiled broadly, saying "jeeeeeetjetbiggin?" I stared harder, jaw dropped lower, as he repeated louder and longer "jeeeeeeeejetbiggggin." At this point I was frozen in my tracks, petrified as it were. His smile faded a tad to a look I often reserve for a three year old that is trying but not quite there yet. I was saved by a stranger, perhaps name Hermes, who stopped, looked at me knowingly and said "the man asks did you eat yet big one"? Wow! In seven years, I am not sure I picked up this language, something that has made me very sympathetic when dealing with ESL (English as a Second Language) students elsewhere.

Well, I hadn't eaten yet,  andI made my way to my parent's house (they had moved there a year before while I was in high school) and surprised them. I didn't tell them I was coming, or that I was planning on attending a local college. They were so excited, they took me out to dinner. My step-father told me about a famous restaurant, Big Ed's, only a few minutes away. We jumped in the care and sped off. We arrived at a small place, nested in a strip mall with a big sign with a big guy (yes, Ed) looming over the threshold. We went in, sat down, and my step-father ordered the specialty for me, a giant cheeseburger and fries. The deal was if you could eat it all in 45 minutes, it was free. I had never seen something like that before, and I was a little aghast. I looked around the room and saw several giants digging into their challenges, families and fans cheering boisterously. It wasn't Texas, but everything and everyone was bigger here.

My dinner came out on a giant pizza pan, The cheeseburger was really eight cheeseburgers topped with every condiment imaginable between two layers of bread that could have each doubled for a hubcap. Wrapped completely around this culinary colossus were about a hundred giant french fries. I wasted a few minutes of the 45 just staring at it. I eventually tied into it, and actually got it all down except one large slice of the cheeseburger. The patrons clapped politely, and Big Ed ambled over and patted me on the back saying something I couldn't understand. I was in the Land of the Giants visiting the Twilight Zone. As we took the scenic route (no such thing in Oklahoma City then) home, I noticed a dozen all-you-could-eat places, and I nearly got sick.

The next morning, I woke early and picked up the paper - it was not my habit to do so, but there was a big picture of a bottle of whiskey and man and a much younger woman holding it. I was intrigued. It turned out that the State Supreme Court was entertaining a case dealing with the inconsistent drinking age law in Oklahoma. It seems the legal aged for women (girls) was a lower than that of men. I assumed it was because women matured faster, the article provided a different attribution - it postulated that there were many men who married much younger girls, and the happy couples should be allowed to go out on the town together. I honestly thought it was a joke. It wasn't. I was even more perplexed the first time I went out for a drink, fully expecting to see a crop of teen aged girls. I got to the first bar I could find and confidently strode in. I was halted at the door and accosted for my membership card. I explained that I didn't have one and was refused entrance. The club was not private, it was just a mechanism to get around another quaint drinking custom of the day - liquor by the drink.

It was illegal in Oklahoma to sell liquor in a public bar, that's correct, you heard it right. You had to bring your own bottle in and then you paid for the setups. Your bottle went behind the bar, and somehow the honor system made sure it only feed you. In a private bar however, you could but it from the bar, therefore a lot of public bars behaved as private ones by creating a membership scheme which also brought in a lot of extra revenue, ie, membership fees. I asked about all of this that night when I found a bar that would let me in for a small fee. It was explained to me that it somehow had to do with the fact that Oklahoma was "smack dab" in the middle of the bible belt. I didn't understand the connection, and was doubly astonished when I heard that they allowed totally nude dancing in the state. Peering through the opaque glitter of the neon lights filtering through my drink, I tried to pull it all together. I could bring in an under aged girl, an open bottle of whiskey, and we could both watch nude exotic dancers, then perhaps finish off the evening at a swanky buffet place on our way home, waking up early of course to go to church. I was confused.

Besides the language difference, and the obtuse drinking etiquette, there were other issues that perpetually perplexed me. Coors beer was Keeeers beer there; everyone wore cowboy boots whether or not they had ever sat on a horse; the most popular dish at the college canteen was Frito Pie, a big would-be casserole constructed with the ascending layers of corn chips, chili, shredded cheese, and jalapeno peppers in that order; 572 Baptists to every Catholic (I counted!); a delicacy called Chicken Fried Steak; an annoying plethora of country and western radio stations; and a Mexican restaurant on every corner, adjacent to, off course, the Baptist church who eyed it closely having heard illegal Mexican aliens were all Catholics (extra-terrestrial aliens and Catholics were counted equally on the state cesus I believe).

I never culturally assimilated in Oklahoma. I didn't hate the place, I just never understood it. Every time I returned to Indiana, or any other state north of Oklahoma, I felt like I had landed back on Earth. Honestly though, I have never travelled anywhere else where I have been that "alienated", not even the remote village in Yemen where I lived  for two years. Today, when people ask me about my travels and if I ever experience culture shock, I sometimes just look at them and reply "jeeeeeeeejetbigggin?"