Stupid Americans

You know what gets my goat? Stupid Americans. (Disclaimer: Stupid Americans are not the same as intelligent, world-aware and non-xenophobic Americans such as my two aunts, my friend Mya, and many other cool Americans.)

Stupid Americans travel across the oh-so-exotic 49th parallel and adopt the mindset of, "Teehee! I'm not in the USA! Look how funny and weird everything is! These people live in a circus! It must be so amusing to live in Not-America!" As a barista, I get the most patronising comments from Stupid Americans who can't take our currency seriously.

Anecdote the first: A teenaged girl asks her mother who that man on the five dollar bill is. "In Canada they put other people on their bills instead of the Presidents, honey." I feel friendly, so I volunteer "I believe that is Sir Wilfred Laurier; he was one of our Prime Ministers." The mother looks at her daughter and laughs ("Ha! Ha!") with a look on her face that indicates that A) she didn't try to understand a word I said, B) "Can you believe that? This caricature is a Sir!" and C) that she views Canada as some sort of Disneyland where everything is obviously designed to be amusing and unrealistic.

Anecdote the second: A mob of teenaged boys on a field trip to Canada are fumbling with their Canadian money, handing me random bills saying, "Is this enough? I can't tell what any of this money is!" and then looking around for their friends to laugh in support of their inability to read. I was willing to forgive them on the count of being teenaged boys, however, their fourty-something leader was also a Stupid American. "Haha! How do you guys know what any of this money is?" Meanwhile, he's only fumbling with quarters, dimes and pennies, which are the exact same shape and colour as American quarters, dimes and pennies. He just felt the need to point out to me that I live in a zoo of a country. Too bad for him he only succeeded in labelling himself as a Stupid American, and in getting the people in line behind him to be extra-nice to me on account of feeling sorry for me.