TALKE TALKS: The blue kid

Howdy from Texas, dear readers,

What were your school days like? Something that, in my observation, connects the German ex-students, regardless of whether they liked or hated that time, whether they were a nerd, a class clown, a loser or everyone’s favorite (i.e. someone who has now undoubtedly become extremely boring, I don’t want anything). hear different!) is that the memories are characterized by simplicity. Sometimes there were freshly baked waffles in the canteen, sometimes someone threw the disgusting blackboard sponge at you, sometimes there was a cool school concert in the auditorium, sometimes the geography teacher smashed his bunch of keys onto your table, sometimes there was no heat, sometimes someone threw you a football in the face.

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American school experiences are more extreme in every way. I know this not only from my daughter, who started preschool this year (more on that later), but above all from two US exchanges of my own. While in Germany I had to glue, copy and staple my school newspaper together in the office myself, the newspaper at my host school in Missouri looked like a copy of Vanity Fair. Of course, there was no television in the Hamburg classroom; my Californian high school had its own student-produced TV channel that was broadcast daily in every classroom. In the toilets at my high school there was no hot water, often no paper to dry myself with and only this nasty powdered soap. American schools have feeding machines, showers, psychologists, bulletproof windows, hand cream, Chromebooks for every student, cheese nachos, seasonal decorations, mascots, water coolers, tissue dispensers, and generous cash donors.

If a German guy wanted to go to the cinema with you, he used to text you on Messenger – today he likes your Insta stories. When an American dude wants to go to one of the many school dances with you, he decorates your car while you sleep and posts a video asking you to be his date. German wedding proposals are less romantic! While we’re at it: Some German weddings are cheaper than an American school dance, where limousines are rented, expensive restaurants are visited and professional photos are taken. In Texas, girls are also hung with “Homecoming Mums,” artificial chrysanthemums that weigh kilos and cost hundreds. But nothing can top the effort that goes into the Quinceañera, the fifteenth birthday of a Latina girl – in Germany it can only be compared to that of a state banquet.

The level of fall in the USA is correspondingly dramatic: the cyber-bullying, the competitive mentality, the ideals of beauty! While the latter require young women to look as chic and slim as possible (unfortunately this sounds familiar to us all), they reach ridiculous proportions for teenage boys. The mother of a fourteen-year-old son confirmed to me what I had already observed myself, namely the bizarre fashion laws that prevail in boys’ high schools: all year round, only shorts are worn, never long pants (here, too, the weather reaches sub-zero temperatures, the calves of the… Poor boys have to turn blue!), plus long, preferably colorful and mismatched socks and Crocs! Since all American trends come to Germany at some point, be warned!

And now to the little ones. There are fashion trends in elementary school too, but they are mostly dress-up mottos (school color days, football jersey days, pajama days and university days, when you actually have to wear shirts from your future university!). Parents are also kept busy with monthly fundraising events and constant requests to donate, help out and dress up themselves (me as a cowgirl the other day, yee-haw!). Overall, the whole thing is idle and cult-like, but it helps ensure that the children have a time at school that they look back on fondly. However, last week it became clear that this kind of pomp offers no protection against idiocy. Numerous American Gen-Zers read a letter from Osama bin Laden on Tiktok with admiration and praised the mass murderer as a liberation fighter. Maybe the parents of these stupid teens spent too much time dressing up, maybe the chilblains were to blame.