Ding ding! Round 8. Boxing Day just ended here in Oz and, much like the anticlimactic terror of Y2K or its attention-poaching Mayan BFF the Apocalypse, (p.s. worst apocalypse ever), I can officially confirm that life after B-Day 2012 is continuing as usual. Knowing that the sun is en route to illuminate this esteemed day in your hemisphere, I’ve tailored this year’s musings menu to pair perfectly with breakfast so pour your coffee and prove it (i.e. Instagram this alongside your mismatched mug, mason-jarred winter flora, and recycled timber table). #YoullBeDoneReadingAroundLunchtime
Similar to how I assume you anticipate this annual installment, the entire (online) world waited with bated breath and suspended status updates for December 21 and the strangely captivating, yet recurrently trite and pedestrian rhetoric it delivers, ahem, delivered. 99% were sure nothing would happen and prepared to gloat-book the evening away. 1% were confused, yet cautiously optimistic about finally bootstrapping their way into the 1% of something. #icanhazfreedom!!!1! Correction: the entire world aside from Australians who didn’t give a bugger, technically speaking. To be fair, Australia’s Prime Minister did record an official End Of World warning video solemnly swearing that "whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-pop, if you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end." So that was reassuring.
Without a doubt, Australia’s no dramas or no wuckers mentality is one of their most endearing qualities. Two years ago I left the stiff upper-lipped-land of Londoners who can’t say great without sounding sarcastic, who apologize (and sincerely feel bad) for not smoking when someone asks for a light, and whose most offensive outburst is “with all due respect” – for the sunny climes and equally sunny constitutions of a populace who can’t utter three syllables without sounding like they zip-a-dee-doo-dah’ed right off the set of Disney’s Song Of The South.
Practical Learning Pop-Out #1 – Fun With Slanguish: Let’s say your friend Laura got into a heated argument with a red-haired woman at Barry’s Christmas party yesterday afternoon. To recount that story to an Australian, you’d say: “Ah mate, Loz and that ranga sheila had a barney at Bazza’s Chrissy party yesterday arvo.” The more you know.
And that’s just the beginning. If someone throws a tantrum, they may have chucked a wobbly, cracked the shits or split the dummy. Slides are slippery dips. If they aren’t calling swimsuits togs, swimmers, bathers, or cossies, they’re gloriously referring to them as budgy smugglers and not missing the chance to point out that they’re all about honesty here. (Point being the optimal word.) War movies are warries, ambulances are ambos, mosquitoes are mozzies, and cigarettes are lung lollys. Clearly, Aussie slang-slinging knows no bounds. But frivolity for frivolity sake goes far beyond slanguage. They have a story they tell tourists about an angry mythical creature called a Drop Bear whose depth of deception rivals the intricate web Seattleites weave* about our terrible, horrible, all-together disgusting weather always.
But to be fair, how can one not be disgust-inducingly happy in Australia? Booming economy, fair wages, beautiful people, animals that do this and this, and lo, the confirmed source of the fountain of youth – adult summer vacation. See, with Chrissy and the summer hols (note to self: band name gold) lumped together, even the largest of corporations close their offices for ridiculous amounts of time. And by ridiculous I mean genius. Arguably the state of Victoria’s most important office is closed from December 19th to January 14th. Remember your first summer that wasn’t filled and filled alone with Otter Pops and budgy smugglers, sometimes synonymously? That fateful July when you felt your energetic innocence flattened like piecrust by the corporate rolling pin you were desperately trying to logroll? Yeah, that feeling never matriculates here. These people aren’t afraid of sharks. Or spiders. Or killer jellyfish. Or apocalypses. Know why? They have white (sandy beach) Christmases to dream of and wake up to – the best of both worlds involving Eskys of stubbies, pressies, and yes, budgy smugglers. Instantly an entire nation unanimously becomes 12-years-old again and it’s June 21st, baby.
If Australia’s no dramas-mentality is rivaled by another endear-inducing quality, it is their unbridled delight in community. Simply think about who (and how many of them) you met the most while traveling. Without violining up a Ken Burns opus for you right here, let’s cut to the lively bit of one consultant’s comparative findings: “US culture has evolved to be one that is very individualistic in nature, with emphasis on free will and the self-made man achieving economic success through the American dream. Australia, in line with its community-oriented heritage, is a culture that emphasizes common good, or the popular expression ‘fair go for all.’” This community spirit is alive, well, and utterly bewildering. You must first know that the official (read: my) collective noun for Australians rotates between heap, pack, and tan. So then, it is naturally perplexing to a freedom of Americans when a tan of Australians sniff out the most crowded place – a city, a beach, a lawn, a bar, a youth hostel in Whistler – and all–go–to–there. In a country of 22 million that is roughly the geographical size of the United States, 14 million budgy-smuggle into 5 cities and seemingly love it, if only because it’s where everyone else is. It’s all about the shared experience here. Everyone, even the Prime Minister, rides in the front seat of taxis, magnanimously perched atop their “we’re all in this together” soapbox.
While outwardly similar in language, heritage, and ridiculous good looks, Australians and Americans actually have fundamentally different attitudes and shockingly opposed cultural philosophies. Yet it’s precisely these differences that make our cultures so admire one another. In a classic case of opposites attracting, of opposable thumbs in craftacular splendor, the love-fest between Americans and Australians borders obsessive. It is rare to find a native who has crossed over to the be- fri- or -st -end side of the hemispherical heart who won’t immediately gush about their journey, the beauty they observed, and the kindness experienced, regardless of the direction they’re traveling. Sure, I still catch myself manifesting my destiny to empty patches of beach, un-blanketed lawns, or backrooms of bars in hopes of avoiding heaps of happy beautiful people, but I also adore it here. A place where my projections of normalcy are upside down. Australia perfectly Tetris'ed its way into This (ex) American Life, differences and oppositions filling in my own gaps much in the same way that the people I’m closest to do.
But as the music gets faster and world events drop with more weight and complexity, things get much more complicated and much less comfortable. For example, if inherent differences fulfill and complete us, why can’t I handle checking Facebook during the course of an election or the unraveling of an unfathomably abhorrent tragedy? If collectively we make one another stronger, why is listening to those who oppose us a lost art? And when did compromise become the new c-word? Rather than evolving, growing, c-wording, it’s as if we are devolving and, in our thunderous deterioration, overprescribing deadlocked opponents with a toxic dose of Montague-Capulet fate tablets. I 100% agree with the logic and optimism behind this interaction, but I am impatient with the change process and admittedly become a part of the problem by chucking a wobbly, or worse, choosing apathy.
Luckily, in one of life’s most macabre plot twists implicitly understood by a group of Mayan horologists, change is one of the few things we can always count on. I find this truth radically reassuring. Especially when my life’s various speeds and contortions begin to feel like a Monopoly marathon – thimbling my way around hotels, public transportation, taxes, bank errors, home-ownership, second prizes in beauty contests, all the while trying to avoid incarceration. However, all I need to do is read a few of my previous yearly missives to regain hope that change comes with more speed and less pain than my fear of the unknown lets me believe. Compromise doesn’t have to wipe out convictions. Change doesn’t have to be apocalyptic.
Practical Learning Pop-Out #2 – Losing My Wings: I’ve recently become aware of a change that comes with marriage – you dance like no one’s watching. And while that sounds cuter than a button-nosed country star threadbaring similar lyrics to sold-out Supacenters, it is utterly detrimental to the delicate dance of seduction-transferring aka wing-womanry. I’ve lost all my single lady swagger and with it, my wings. I clipped them myself the moment I realized that if I’m at a bar and dancing ensues, I no longer seamlessly contort into a smooth, yet entirely asexual ‘come hither and meet my hot friend’ maneuver as I did in my prime. Oh no, I go for it. I’m a robot. I’m a cyclone. I’m the sax soloist. I. Am. Roger. Rabbit. The one thing I most definitely am not is sexy. With unconditional husbandry love comes freedom like I’ve never tasted. My friends can fire “snap into it” glares all they want, but the hook is coming and I am unstoppable. So that’s new.
For more on that, join me next year. Until then, you can ponder life’s deepest questions like why British people don’t have an accent when they sing or who decided the freezer wasn’t worthy of a door light. Better yet, tackle my friend Michelle’s timely query of why there isn’t an “I’m sorry” horn in cars to say “whoops” and remind one another we’re all in this together. (They likely have one in post-apocalyptic development here in Australia. Probably dubbed a sozza-hornie or something equally supreme.)
As I reflect on 2012 and all of its non-world-ending events – on new life and tragic death, on brave compromises and meaningful convictions, on Monopoly monotony and Tetris-tantrums – words can't express how grateful and inspired I am by you, my abundantly talented, kind, hilarious friends. Many of whom I must by default assume have indeed seen my unbridled dance-floor carnage and yet still made it to this, the final sentence. You are the true heroes of Boxing Day.
*by myth, I mean completely true statement. Please let me move back someday.
