America: Where Everything is Bigger

On the way to work this morning, I passed by this enormous, 3-foot spindly, creepy-looking bug. I remember when I was travelling, my aunt warned me that when I was staying around California I should check my shoes every morning in case there’d be a scorpion hiding in them. This huge bug looked like it might have been dead. But no-one was freaking out over it, and since no-one had been as terrified as I of these gigantic things called June bugs that I saw at a party one time, I guessed it must have been some sort of native arachnid monster, and I should just bloody well get used to it as part of the scenery.

I had to do a quintuple take before I realized it was actually a broken-off bit of tree branch.

As my apartment building’s dryer got fried by the flooding the other week, it’s perpetually laundry day as far as I’m concerned, so I had dressed for work in a grey lace single-breasted blazer, purple houndstooth fitted jeggings, grey belted ankle boots, and a loose, 80s-style tunic with pictures of buildings on it. So, while I’m clear on the fact that my clownish attire leads shuttle drivers to believe I work at Dunkin’ Donuts, I didn’t want people to think that I not only dressed like an escaped mental patient, but that I also acted like one, staring down at a broken-off bit of tree branch like it was not a broken-off bit of tree branch.

You couldn’t blame me for thinking it. I probably have some form of dyslexia owing to the fact that I can see a fire hydrant from a distance and think that it’s  a small child in a puffer jacket, but everything is so much bigger, weirder and more extreme that the thought did cross my mind that a giant 3-foot-long insect could wander around Boston and not faze anyone. Because everything is so inexplicably enormous here – bigger, louder, more insane, such as:

Egos:

Religion:

Cars:

But ultimately I think food is the biggest culprit.

Everyone and their mum has seen this infographic, but I can’t quite grasp the point of the newest Starbucks drink size:

What if you’re drinking it on a train? Will you get one of these free?

And then there’s diner food. When I think of pancakes, I think of something like this for Shrove Tuesday:

Yet if you order pancakes at a diner, you get something more like this:

And whenever I’d go into an ice cream/chocolate shop, I ordered a “baby-sized” ice cream in case I couldn’t finish it:

I’m sorry…what? “Baby-size”? As in, the size of an actual baby? Cause it’s not like it’s tiny. And if it’s the size of an actual baby…no wonder Americans are so unhealthy.

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