The Inexplicable Americans!

Thanks to Anurag Mathur for aptly describing an entire nation with just one phrase. To that, there's a humble addition ? they are not just inscrutable but also inexplicable.

Thanks to Anurag Mathur for aptly describing an entire nation with just one phrase. To that, there's a humble addition — they are not just inscrutable but also inexplicable.

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Maybe it's just their fetish for being different that had them vocabularise the Queen's English according to their whims and fancies, not to forget that ubiquitous American twang that they have so carefully cultivated — probably in their hurry to get rid of the tag that they were English.

How does one then explain their various quirks - like that young woman sitting in her vehicle across the Wall Street, smoking a cigarette with a 'No Smoking' sign strung to her rear view mirror.

Was she mocking the signage or was she mocking herself? The answer, one supposes, was blowing in the smoke rings.

Then of course there's the ultimate puzzle - why one earth would you build a left-hand drive vehicle that has doors only on the right-hand side, so that passengers alighting and boarding do so right in the middle of the busy street with traffic buzzing past.

So, there you are, at your most intrepid best, getting off with a shoulder load of television equipment right in the middle of a road with a 12-tonner lumbering past you at just an arm's length. Medal of honour, anyone?

And then there's the Secret Service, that goes strictly by-the-book, as long as it's a peace-time operation. They are firm believers in the powers of the canines.

So, you and your accessories could be screened a zillion times in a X-ray machine and checked manually but it only needs one sniff of their favourite `Tommy' and voila, it's the magic wand to gain entry into the venue. Weird is a mild term for them!