When most people “roll their eyes”, they flick their eyes directly upward, usually as far as they comfortably go, then resume looking normally.
When someone who learned the phrase before the behavior does it, they usually go in a circular (ish) motion. Since most eye movements are lines, it’s usually pretty triangular: the key points are usually a diagonal up one way, then to the far other side, then to a diagonal low the first way. Thus, the eyes basically make a loop, so they “rolled”.
I’ve found that when people who learned the up-down way first try the circular motion, they might risk motion sickness, so experiment carefully.
My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner
A fave of mine was always the american tales where people freaked out because ‘someone died in this house’ and all the europeans would go ‘…Yes? That would be pretty much every house over 40 years old.’
‘…My school is older than your entire town.’
‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’
*American looks up at the beams in a country pub* ‘Uh, this place has woodworm, isn’t that a bit unsafe?’ ‘Eh, the woodworm’s 400 years old, it’s holding those beams together.’
A few years ago when I was in college I did a summer program at Cambridge aimed specifically at Americans and Canadians, and my year it was all Americans and one Australian. We ended the program with a week in Wessex, and on the last day as we all piled onto the bus in Salisbury (or Bath? I can’t remember), the professors went to the front to warn us that we wouldn’t be making any stops unless absolutely necessary. We’re headed to Heathrow to drop off anyone flying off the same day, then back to Cambridge.
“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”
We all brace ourselves. A long bus ride? How long? We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible. We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.
The answer. “Two hours.”
Oh.
English people trying to travel around Australia and wildly underestimating distance are my favourite thing
a tour guide in France told my school group that a particular cathedral wouldn’t interest us much because “it’s not very old; only from the early 1600s”
to which we had to respond that it was still older than the oldest surviving European-style buildings in our country
China is both old and big. I had some Chinese colleagues over; we were discussing whether they wanted to see the Vasa ship (hugely expensive war ship which sank on it’s maiden voyage after 12 min). They asked if it was old, I said “not THAT old” (bearing in mind they were Chinese) “it’s from the 1500s.” To my surprise they still looked impressed, nodding enthusiatically. Then I realised I’d forgotten something: “…I mean it’s from the 1500s AFTER the birth of Christ” and they went “oh, AFTER…”.
My dad’s favorite quote from various tours in Italy was “Pay no attention to the tower – it was a [scornful tone]
tenth century addition.”
My last boss was Chinese, and she said when her parents came to visit her from Beijing they pronounced Chicago “A very nice village.”
This post keeps getting better
European problems include:
- Missing a turn and now you need to cross the border;
- Towns built 500 to 800 years ago with really small roads where cars can barely fit;
- That road/parking lot/etc they were building is gonna take twice the time to finish because they found Roman ruins AGAIN!
European problems extended:
WW2 bombs.
I love this post but also hate it because people never acknowledge the structures of native and indigenous people in America and Canada. We literally have pyramids here in Illinois that are thousands of years old.
There is stuff here from the Aztecs, but since it wasn’t made by settlers people think that America is only as old as when Europeans came over.
The population that got wiped out and displaced by Europeans is still here and needs to be acknowledged. America and Canada aren’t “young” and have more history than most ppl acknowledge.
RT only for the last post.
[Image description: headlines of WWII bombs either exploding unexpectedly in European towns and cities or being found during road works. /ID]
I went walking on some public footpaths in England and everyone was like “oh this one was a Roman roads, these are so ancient!” and I ended up cranky because there are ancient or at least hundred of year old roads in the Americas, we just don’t pay attention to them because Colonization.
To be clear - I don’t have any issue with OP’s statement (or even any of the reblogs). Im just cranky at the US educational system. And boomers, a little.
Where do you think the oldest shoes in the world are? China? Greece? Iraq?
they’re from Oregon:
Catalog #1-33612 and #1-31699 Sagebrush Sandals: Fort Rock Cave, Oregon, ca. 10,000 years old
Where do you think the
oldest shoes in the world are?
China? Greece? Iraq?
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Growing up in the midwest: look for oddly shaped hills. There are a lot of mounds and earthworks that are hard to see because there’s grass (and parking lots, sometimes,) on them.
In the mountain west? Look up. The things that weren’t destroyed by the tiny creek in the canyon you’re in are the things that were built well above it’s flood stage. You have to know what you are looking for.
“I don’t like the Jack Harkness test because it means it’s okay to fuck Scooby Doo”
yes that’s the entire damn point of the Harkness test. The Harkness Test doesn’t exist to say you have to fuck Scooby Doo. The Harkness Test exists to say that it is morally/ethically fine for someone to want to fuck Scooby Doo, because Scooby Doo can give informed consent and communicate as such.
the reason you don’t like it is because none of you are self-aware enough to realize how incredibly fucking puritan all of you are when it comes to fucking
*shaking movie directors by the shoulders* NIGHTTIME AND OTHER FORMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DARKNESS CAN BE IMPLIED WITHOUT MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE THE FUCKING MOVIE
i have naturally acidic sweat. it’s a family thing
we have already. They don’t know exactly what is up with it, other than the sweat being slightly more acidic than normal and the acidic mantle being thicker and Way more acidic than normal, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with acidosis. As far as we have tested, our family has had this since at least my great grandpa, and the guy lived to be 93 years old.
What the fuck.
op is a xenomorph descendant from that one time ripley fucked the queen
hey op. i want you to know my boyfriend has been in hysterics, laughing and occasionally wheezing out “bibby” for the past half an hour because of this post. are you proud of what youve done?
Anonymous
