Waking up American; Going to Bed British
The difference between the British and Americans is like the difference between tea and coffee. I mean, let’s not talk about the Boston Tea Party. Let’s not talk about how the king was taxing them over 10% of their wages, and they, the early colonizers, became gruff and spilled all the king’s tea into the Boston Harbor. Can you imagine if that happened today? First of all, we’re taxed 20%, at least, of our wages.
Then the money that’s already been taxed is taxed again at the grocery store. It’s taxed again when you buy a car, buy a house. It’s taxed when you’re brought into this world, because you pay taxes on top of the pediatricians and gynecologists and everybody who brings a baby out of the womb into the world and slaps its little butt. But you’re also taxed at death. If those Boston Tea Party members was around today, I hate to think what would happen.
But let’s get back to the metaphor, shall we? The difference between the British and Americans is the difference between tea and coffee. Tea is something you sip slowly and it makes you feel good, especially green tea, or chamomile right before bed. The British have this thing called tea time. Americans don’t have coffee time. They might have coffee with their breakfast. They might go out and eat breakfast with some friends and have coffee.
But there is a complete difference. Coffee is like a nuclear explosion of wakefulness. Americans don’t have time for pitter-patter, for chitter-chatter. Americans don’t have time for tea time. Americans just wanna get blasted with wakefulness so they can go and do their grind. They got a hustle to do. They gotta wake up. They gotta be alert. They ain’t got time to trip into work and be sleepy and yawning.
No, they need something to hit the veins with caffeine-laced wakefulness, and get out of my way, and road rage all the way to work, and road rage all the way home. “How was your day, honey?” “Uh, I didn’t have enough coffee so it was kinda slow, until Sam made a pot of that thick, black ichor where the spoon stood up straight.” But in Britain, they have tea time. They go to their garden, which is their backyard or their front yard.
You know, even if it doesn’t have any plants, they call it a garden, because the implication is you’re gonna grow something in your garden. And you’re gonna sit down and you’re gonna relax with some friends and sip tea, and talk about the meaning of life, or Jesus Christ, or hell, or the Parliament, or who did what. And there’s just this fellowship thing going on. And time seems to stand still during tea time.
Well, tea time is over. Gotta get going. But not Americans. Americans are having a barbecue. They’re roasting ribs and drinking beer, and them British are slowing time down with tea time. That’s how the British and Americans are different. Americans are brash, like John Smith, killing people in the early colonized nation of America, fighting Indians when he has to, making up stories when he has to, marketing himself as something greater than himself, the next big thing, get me another cup of coffee.
The British are into the king and royalty, and tea time. And not mysticism per se, but antiquity. When I was running an online magazine, it became apparent to me that stories that came from England and South Africa were much, much better edited than stories that came from Americans. Why? Because the British had tea time. They could slow time down and zero in on their story and sip some tea and relax and concentrate and focus.
But Americans, they drink that cup of coffee, then they drink another, and then the pot of coffee was in ‘em, and they are, “I ain’t got time for this.” And they’d rush through their editing with a caffeine haze. That’s the way I see it. And I’m drinking lemon chamomile tea, two pouches, to try to get myself back into a sleep schedule that is healthy. So tonight, I’m British. I’m focused. I’m concentrating on philosophical meanderings and I’m writing it down in this blog.
Tomorrow, I will wake up an American and I will drink my mushroom coffee mixed in with instant coffee, and it will be like legal crack cocaine in my bloodstream, and I will be rushing like a bull getting Vinnie to St. Jude where he’ll get his chemotherapy. But tomorrow night, I will become British again. I will slow down. I’ll make some lemon chamomile tea, take some melatonin with some L-theanine… and slip away into British dreamland.
Goodnight.