{"id":367,"date":"2012-04-25T11:06:35","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T09:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=367"},"modified":"2015-04-04T11:35:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T09:35:49","slug":"what-you-cant-do-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/what-you-cant-do-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"What you can’t do in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the government of Hessen invited me to talk to a group of German students who were going to spend a semester in America. I talked about stereotypes and the way citizens of our two countries often see each other. Other speakers talked about visa requirements and the American university system. The most interesting part, however, was when the returning students were asked to give their own advice to their successors<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The organizers had suggested quite a few topics, about which there was indeed a lot of discussion: course loads<\/span>, dormitory<\/span> life, meal plans<\/span>, and transferring<\/span> money. But there was one topic that the returning students kept bringing up again and again: alcohol.<\/p>\n

On this subject, the differences between our two countries could not be greater. In Germany, in the last two years or so, drunken 16-year-olds have been wandering the streets with open bottles of beer in their hands. Especially in places where it’s not allowed, such as buses and trains, the alcoholics of tomorrow are often seen flaunting<\/span> their impropriety<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Try that in America and you will get arrested \u2014 on as many as three counts<\/span>.<\/p>\n

First, no one under the age of 21 is allowed to drink any alcohol in any public place. Second, no one is allowed to carry an open bottle of alcohol in public. (This is why derelicts<\/span> hide their bottles in a paper bag.) Third, in many places it’s possible to be arrested for being “drunk and disorderly<\/span>“. Whether you are really disorderly or just loud and obnoxious<\/span> is something the cops will decide.<\/p>\n

In most states, you can buy alcohol in a supermarket, but in some, like Pennsylvania, you have to go to a special store. A sign next to the cashier<\/span> might read, “If you are lucky enough to look younger than 35, we have the right to card you<\/span>.” Once you’ve bought the alcohol, it has to go in the trunk<\/span> of the car, presumably<\/span> to remove any temptation<\/span> for the driver.<\/p>\n

On college campuses<\/span>, things get complicated because some of the students are old enough to drink and some aren’t. If a group of students go to a restaurant and any one of them orders alcohol, the whole group will have to show ID<\/span>. The wait staff<\/span> will keep an eye on things to try to prevent anyone from swapping<\/span> drinks. They have to do this: the police could show up at any time.<\/p>\n

A student I talked to explained that, in Wisconsin, it was possible for a student over 21 to have alcohol in a room that was shared with a student under 21 \u2014 but the bottle had to be in the over-21’s part of the room (in a box under the bed, for example) and at no time could the alcohol be visible to the under-21.<\/p>\n

In an earlier column<\/a>, I suggested some reasons why America is so strict about this. Here are a few more.<\/p>\n

Part of the American tradition began with religious groups that followed unusually strict rules of moral behavior. We had the Puritans and Quakers. Today we still have the Amish and Mennonites. But even in many “mainstream” Protestant communities of the Midwest and South, so-called “blue laws”<\/a> that forbid the sale of alcohol on Sundays have long been a tradition. Among the devout<\/span>, alcohol is believed to bring out the worst in people.<\/p>\n

In some cases it really does. Native Americans have a genetic predisposition<\/span> to alcoholism, and for this reason, alcohol is forbidden on a number of reservations.<\/p>\n

The main reason, though, is that in America, everybody drives a car. The minimum age for that is generally 16, or even lower in some rural<\/span> states. While Germans get their initial<\/span> experiences with alcohol out of the way before learning to drive, Americans get in plenty of driving practice before they start raising their glasses. I think it’s good, and possibly deliberate<\/span>, that one doesn’t have to accustom oneself<\/span> to both things at the same age.<\/p>\n

Still… if alcohol was the number-one topic among the students in Hessen, driving had to be topic number two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the government of Hessen invited me to talk to a group of German students who were going to spend a semester in America. I talked about stereotypes and the way citizens of our two countries often see each other. Other speakers talked about visa requirements and the American university system. The most interesting part, however, was when the … >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[156,118,214],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}