What do you say to a British person who’s bashing England?

yankeebean

I went to a ‘networking-of-doom’ event the other day and an English guy walked up me and said, “Oh my God, I just HAVE to find out where you’re from in America, I can’t take it anymore.”  (I guess he’d heard my joyful, thunderous hard-R’s from across the room or something…)

So I smiled and gave my standard where-I-came-from speech (I could do it in my sleep, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I DO say it my sleep…)

He was a complete America-lover, but he didn’t talk so much about loving America – instead he kept going on about how much he HATED England.

I was like a deer in the headlights… I didn’t know WHAT to do in order to escape the situation with everyone’s feelings in tact.  I quickly scanned through the options, much like the Terminator when in a situation of danger.  I could:

1. Agree with every thing he said and use the opportunity to have a good ol’ rant about every thing that annoys me.  But I didn’t want to risk taking it too far and turning his gung-ho attitude into an ‘I-think-you’re-a-ho’ attitude.  I know we’re all familiar with that defensiveness that creeps in even if it’s only a bunch of English people talking about how much they hate CSI Miami.
2. Smile and laugh and say nothing (yeah, right… saying nothing isn’t exactly my strong point.  I’d get hungry if my foot wasn’t constantly in my mouth)
3. Disagree with him and defend my nation 2.0, trying to come up with the positive side to everything that seemed to make him clutch his moobs in dispair.

In the end, I opted for a kind of combination of 1 and 3.  Laughing and smiling like a loon, agreeing with him while also trying to point out anything positive I could.  It ended up feeling very aren’t-we-all-just-amazing-and-blameless-and-innocent-as-fresh-snowfall.

I don’t think he noticed my inner Terminator calculations - he seemed perfectly happy… phew!

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