No, no. Mark hasn't switched to wearing Speedos or Man Capris. Nor has he been sporting a Messenger bag to work.
What we have done is go ice free. Something I vowed I'd never do since I'm hopelessly addicted to ice. But when our fridge went on the fritz, life deteriorated into a loathsome and iceless existence. Everything we drink nowadays is tepid--which, I might add, would thoroughly please our European counterparts.
When traveling abroad, it's always easy to be picked off as an American. The tell is that you've ordered a diet coke and asked for ice. Usually this sort of pitiful shenanigan merits a wrinkled brow and mildly perceptible scoff from your waitperson. You have just declared yourself hopelessly American and it's just a matter of time before your waiter expects you to ask for an offending bottle of ketchup.
Once, on a particularly hot day in Edinburgh, I was served a warm glass of coke. Just coke. Strait up from the can. I took it over to the bar and ever-so-politely asked for ice. I was rewarded with what could only be described as a disdainful glare as if I'd just knocked over a helpless old lady and begun stopping on her head with my foot. The man behind the bar didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He reeked of disappointment and shame at my willingness to wallow in such icy squalor with all the other foreign human debris. He grabbed some silver tongs and dropped a single cube of ice into my warm coke. One cube. Apparently he momentarily forgot I was American and that Americans are notoriously wasteful consumers who don't do just "one" of anything (just watch us shop at Costco).
Now I'm not sure if they've got refrigeration problems overseas or perhaps suffer from severe dental distress when drinking cold drinks, but the whole of the European block, these otherwise fine and lovely folks, all have a strange contempt for cold beverages and for anyone who drinks them.
So when our fridge's ice maker died we were all left dying for ice. I must confess that I slowly got used to it. Like a slow arsenic poisoning. Shamefully within just a month I was sloshing back water and coke--all at room temperature without even batting an eye.
But now that summer is here and the temperature outside is getting hot, we just couldn't take it anymore. I went out and bought a new fridge just for it's ice-making capabilities. We got it home and plugged the sucker in and waited. After about an hour a strange thud belched from our new appliance--the melodious sound of Heaven (the American version anyway).
Ice!!!
Ahhhhh. God bless America...and Whirlpool.
Well, Europeans don't believe in deodorant or shaving either!
ReplyDeleteWe broke away from them for a reason ya know!
Happy to see you have ice again. Now we can come for a visit.
Ice is overrated! And the reason they don't really have much ice in Britain is because there are only a handful of days per year hot enough to merit the stuff. So why buy a whole ice machine that you'll only a couple of times? It's the same principle with air conditioners. Plus, and this is something most Americans don't know, water comes out off the tap much colder in the UK than in the US. I've converted to the no-ice UK way and now and whenever I visit the US I'm always disappointed with the tiny amount of drink you actually get because there's so much dang ice in my cup. Then again, I guess you get free refills in the US (not so in the UK). Still, ice is overrated (except that cool, crunchy turd ice stuff!).
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