Charmed by Canadian

During the first leg of my flight eastward, I sat next to a Canadian fella. As usually happens when you're practically sitting on some one's lap for several hours, we got to chatting. What's in L.A. for you? Where you coming from? Etc. My flight mate was going Guadalajara, Mexico surfing. He proceeded, then, for the remainder of the flight and for the 2 hours I had during my layover in L.A., to dis America and Americans.

It started out innocently enough. He pointed out that Americans are not well-received when traveling and often pose as Canadians. Yes, this is a true statement in many cases. But I assured him that during my three and a half years of living abroad I was never received with any animosity or aggression due to my U.S. citizenship. As a matter of fact, most people were polite, respectful and helpful...even after making it clear that they were not a fan of our "Chief."

Next he launched into a tirade (that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much) about how American surfers where not welcome in their waters. There is surfer protocol and they will drive them out physically. Wow. Sounds pretty serious.

The subject then came to the almighty American dollar...and oh, how disgusting it is that we have so many of them and can go up to Canada and buy up their property with cash! An American, apparently, pulled up in his yacht and bought this guy's house on the beach with cash! We have far too much money to be waiving in these poor Canadians' faces.

Over the course of the night I had learned that this guy was 29, lived and/or traveled all over the world, owns a house on the beach north of Vancouver, B.C., owns a Land rover, a Quad, two motorcycles, a boat, and a snowmobile. I swear if I had asked him if he owned a helicopter he would have told me he had one in storage and one on the roof of his house or something! And he's holding a grudge about American excess? He is the proprietor of Action Jackson Productions where he drives stunt vehicles, mostly for commercials. I thought that sounded like interesting and exciting work. He made it clear that it doesn't pay as much as one would think. Whatever. I was quite honestly pretty exhausted talking to the guy about his toys and money by this point.

Before we were through he shared with me that the Canadian firefighters use American firefighter videos to train them on what NOT to do, Americans have the highest suicide rate in the world, and some other nasty statistic that I can't even remember because this guy was beginning to get on my nerves by now.

I'm not exactly overly patriotic at times. I get very disgusted by our government, our role in global welfare and our wasteful society just to name a few. But listening to this guy...this guy from a comparably wealthy country, from an affluent background, pick and poke and criticize, made me a bit defensive. We aren't all that bad. And we aren't all that bad. It's like picking on my brother. It's okay if I make fun of him, but as soon as someone else chimes in, I run to his aide. I wanted to say "enough already, dude. Give it a rest." Instead, in an effort to keep peace with my neighbor from the north with the prominent chip on his shoulder, I smiled and said "enjoy your surfing trip" and walked to my gate.

Our country definitely has problems. We are aware. But whose doesn't. Does anyone ever say "ours is the most perfect government in the world" or better yet "that country has the best government, let's be like them?" Never. We are also trying to change things with this next election. Can we? (Okay, I am not going to quote Obama here!) Who knows. But hopefully we can make improvements.

I didn't talk at all to the man sitting next to me on the next leg of my journey. I said hello, got out my blanket, took off my sandals and slept.