CALL ME SNAKE

Last night a friend spoke of a French woman who recently moved to Cambridge and is put off by the friendliness and cheerfulness and general “upbeatness” of Americans, which strikes her as phony. In France, she says, people say what they really feel rather than putting on a false front.

As an American, I see it a little differently. Yesterday a friend told me that he felt happy–that everything was going really well, and it struck me how rare it is that I hear something like that. In fact, I can’t remember the last time someone spontaneously told me, without being prompted or asked, that they felt happy. People are trained to say “fine” when asked how they’re doing. But we view that as just being polite, not acting especially cheerful. Or at least that’s how I see it. And I’d certainly prefer that to a bunch of complaints which I often hear anyway.