His first night in Texas was spent sitting in the passenger seat of my Toyota Tundra. We had attempted to go to Breakaway that night, I being a Christian and he being, as he said, "open-minded", but unfortunately we could not find a parking spot. We stopped to get gas, and when it was time to leave the gas station, he told me something that I will never forget. He looked over at me and jokingly told me "You know, this is the first time I have ever ridden in a truck. I've driven and rode in cars, but never a truck like this." I chuckled and replied "Well, we do have a few of them down here." And then, with a very puzzled look on his face, he asked me "Why do you people drive trucks down here? Do you have a lot of stuff to move around?" I was a little taken back by this. At that moment I began to notice all the trucks around me and how little work the bed of my own truck was getting. I had never really thought about why I had this truck. "Well, no" I said, "but occasionally I do so it's nice to have a truck. But, I mean, a lot of us don't move things around in our trucks daily. It's just something we have 'down here'."
I now realize that that, essentially, is culture. Just something we have or do "down here". Culture isn't something that can be written down and passed on to generation from generation like a book; culture is meant to be lived and experienced! We all hear stories of how in Mexico you have a time of the day when everybody goes home and takes a nap and in the United Kingdom evidently all there is to drink is tea. We all know that this is part of their culture, but we cannot truly say we understand that culture. Sylvain could (and did) tell me of different methods or reasons that he did in France, but I could not understand them without experiencing them. In turn, it's hard to exactly pinpoint what exactly our culture here is without an outside view, such as a foreign roommate. Why do put on our best button down shirt and cowboy boots and go dancing? For what reason do we strap people onto very angry bulls and time how long they can hold on to it? When on the bus, why is it really necessary to sit at least one seat away from someone? The answer to these questions is very simple. These are all just things that we do "down here".
Culture is not something that can be easily defined. It is not even a word that has various adjectives to describe it; we cannot call it green, tall, or solid as we can many other words. It is an omnipresent force which influences every aspect of
a society. Art, music, food, politics, sports, education, and nearly any other
part of which we call “normal” is prone to culture. In fact, to call culture a simple
definition would be to under appreciate it. Culture is a mist that you must
surround yourself and get lost in to completely understand the meaning of it.
Sylvain came home one day after a walk through the local park. Wide eyed, he ran into the kitchen area where I was heating up leftovers for dinner. He looked at me and, with the most bewildered look I have ever seen on a human face, he told me "Travis, I saw an armadillo today! It was in the park and it scurried under the bridge! I've never seen one before!" Laughing, I replied back to him "Yep, we have a lot of armadillos around here! They're just something we have 'down here'."
So, with this in mind, if you were to know someone from foreign soil, could you explain our culture to them? How would you do it? Could you explain why, exactly, we do what we do? It may sound simple, but to others, it is not as straight forward as you would think.
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