My English professor looked up from Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell saying, "It's almost like a national stereotype isn't it, the way Orwell asks him if he plays golf, as though it is expected?" I stifled a laugh, looking down at the note I sat composing for my Austrian friend Christine who sat next to me. I was in the middle of writing to her about our British friends, and how each of them fills a comical stereotype, and had just looked at my professor's enormous bouffant of hair, sickly yellowed skin and fingernails from spending far too many days indoors reading, and his pointed, intellectual nose supporting half-glasses with gold rims. "He looks like the Grinch!" I wrote. Looking again, I recognized the "English professor" stereotype making eye contact with me, pleasantly amused with his comments. His monotone voice and British accent droned on in the aging classroom as I mused over the framework of stereotypes that come into play when national prides collide.
I told my flat-mate recently, a girl from Essex (known for its accent and Essex "tarts," which we would call "skanks," I believe) that we Americans have stereotypes about British people too, firing back at her for laughing at my expressions. "Oh my Gad!" she said, mimicking me. I had kept our stereotypes out of play, wanting to surprise her at the right moment when she once again called our television trash and our films filth. "You know, in America, some people say British people have bad teeth and are drunks." She quickly turned her head, saying, "Really? Wow, that's actually somewhat true. At least the drinking part."
I nodded in agreement, thinking about the Brits I know, particularly men. It seems, when drinking, they have an odd penchant for rowdiness, vandalism, and vomiting.
The British, it is true, love to drink. It is normal to take a study break and walk two blocks to our local pub, the Crown and Anchor. One pint and I am heading back to work, but in the hour that I am there with my British mates, they have accumulated a stack of pint glasses so high it boggles the mind. Where does it all go? It is also normal to hear my friend Jimmy outside my window after drinking with his "rugby mates," puking up, as they put it. And mind you, I hear him with the window closed. I am convinced that many British men have a constant supply of alcohol in their veins. During lunch, after work, after dinner, they are in the pubs. I feel "pissed" (drunk) merely talking about it.
Not only do they drink, but it seems they are so reserved during the normal hours of life, that once they get going on the pints, they let loose in a way I still struggle to comprehend. One bloke, having gulped a few too many, stumbled into a party I attended, carrying his recently killed pheasant on a wooden stand, waving its decaying body around in my face. "Look at my fresh kill. Isn't she a beauty?"
Another boy thinks vandalism is a good idea, choosing to punch numerous ceiling tiles in the hallway and throw bottles out of the windows rather than get a groove on to some good music. His voice grows decibels and his sense leaves him quickly as the level of alcohol increases. While discussing prostitution with him one night, he said, "Hell, I'd do the Queen Mum for a fiver if I needed to." That's five pounds by the way: $7.50.
Some Brits also seem to like to shoot off the fire extinguishers and steal construction signs from the numerous road work sites around my building. And no one has been spared the image of a drunk Englishman screaming at a giant screen TV in a pub, encouraging his favorite football club, with much profanity, yelling, "Ohh... come on boys... bloody hell!"
Of course, these are futile stereotypes, but what accuracy some people provide to these expectations! I can't help but laugh hysterically at the hilarity of it all, knowing full well that my loud laugh and Maine accent cater oh so well to the British mind's categorization of Americans. But oddly, my speech has become a certain hybrid between Maine and Essex accents, and some of my British friends have dropped "bloke" for "guy" and "Alright" for "What's up." We label each other, but not vindictively. We laugh and realize how well we seem to fit the molds sometimes, and at other moments, how we all mesh together into a pot of people getting drunk and talking nonsense, screaming at the tops of our lungs down empty streets in London after a rowdy night at the pub.
Eds:jw, bo
