The 20 year old me - Part 1

My 20^th year was by far one of the best years of my life. But my second decade (age 10-20) had been the worst of all my decades. It took going through that decade to discover what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to be. Only then, in that 20^th year, did I start to grow into my own skin. Because these are two very diverse stories I’m going to split this blog into two parts. Part 2 is about my second decade, and part 1 is about my 20^th year.

Two days after I turned 20 I moved to the United States to attend Southern New Hampshire University (then known as New Hampshire College).

Before I left for Uni, I spent a lot of time with my friends in particular my three best friends; Caff, Rachel, and Adele. We’d go to our favourite bar in Leeds; Yel! and drink Taboo and lemonades, or cider straight from the bottle. After Yel! we’d go to Mister Craig’s, or Ritzy’s nightclub; the former was always a bit edgier than the latter. After the club we’d go either to one of the late night curry houses, a kebab shop, or we’d hit a petrol station on the way home and buy pickled onion flavoured monster munch crisps and eat them on the bonnet of the car whilst singing some of the evening’s club songs at the top of our lungs. We’d crawl home at 3am. Caff and I were more fond of pubs and playing pool, so you’d often find us on a Sunday afternoon holed up at the local taking bets on who could beat Caff (as she really was a bit of a pool shark!) Adele and I were always the designated drivers as we were the only two that had cars. I had a Nissan Micra. It was ridiculously slow and crap, but I loved the independence it gave me. We used to drive around with our windows down singing Mr. Big’s ‘To Be With You’ at the top of our lungs. We loved karaoke on a Sunday night, and there wasn’t a club in town that didn’t know us by sight, if not name. The biggest groups of the time were East 17, D:Ream, and Meatloaf. Take That, Blur, and Oasis were just starting to make a name for themselves. However, we considered ourselves a little more

avant garde and preferred the sounds of Prince, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and we loved the Rocky Horror Show.  One of us was invariably always on the Slim Fast diet even though it gave us stomach ache. Our favourite movie (which we’d all been to see that summer) was ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ and we couldn’t stop singing the title track, ‘Love is all Around.’ We lived and died in our Doc Martin’s and black leggings, always accompanied by an equally dark baggy top and either a black leather biker jacket, or a cardigan-coat that would almost reach the ground. We’d take jaunts out to Roundhay Park, or Bolton Abbey and bake ourselves in the sun all day. We’d all head out to the bars in the evening looking like lobsters. A couple of weeks before I left for America Adele, Rachel and I went to Scarborough for a week. A last ‘girls’ holiday. We traversed the local pubs, bars, and nightclubs every night and we owned every one of them. We were dancehall divas and we got to know all the local DJ’s and barstaff. When the nightclubs closed down for the night we pilfered some beers and wine from behind the bars, gathered a group of random people we’d met during the night and go down to the beach for a rather drunken football game. We’d crawl into bed as the sun was rising and not wake up until it was setting. This was the life of a British teenager in the early 1990’s, and we thought we were so cool.

And then I moved to America.

My first year in the USA was a bit of a roller coaster. I loved it and loathed it all at the same time. I enjoyed my classes, the new friends I was making, the new experiences, and the fun of Uni life. But I didn’t like the food, the cultural chasm, and the absolute lack of anything remotely familiar.

I lived on a dorm with 15 other people of both sexes. This was the first time I’d ever had to share accommodation with males. I found it a little daunting at first and struggled to find my footing in terms of interacting with them, especially when I had to walk down the hallway in a towel to get to the showers. I had a roommate also, Denise. Now, this threw me because in the UK we don’t have roommates at university level so I was very surprised to walk into my dorm room to find a bunk bed instead of a single bed. Just as I struggled to accommodate to the new male presence on my dorm, I also struggled with having a roommate. Simply, I’d never shared a room with anyone before and I was perhaps a little too coveted with my space and belongings. Denise, however, was very generous and let me use her mini fridge to store milk for my cups of tea, and borrow her Brother typewriter to write up my assignments. This was a bit of an eye opener for me because in the UK everything was hand written, so when at the end of my first class the professor asked for the homework to be typed I went into a blind panic. Denise also introduced me to my first Thanksgiving. She took me home with her to Revere, MA and we had turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, mash, corn, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. It was the best meal I’d had in the USA up to that point. She also took me to Homecoming, which essentially involved us standing in the freezing cold watching an American football game, which I didn’t understand in the slightest (and still don’t to this day). Denise also introduced me to Dunkin Donuts. She will be honoured furthermore! DD’s is a dietry staple of New Englanders, and no morning could be gotten through without a DD’s large French Vanilla Coffee with extra extra and two equal!

I was the only international student on the dorm and I felt like a duck out of water. It wasn’t just that I sounded different, and that I wanted to hand write my assignments, but I literally had nothing in common with them. As I wore Doc Martins, they all wore sneakers (and wouldn’t be caught dead in Docs), they wore jeans and baggy t-shirts and I wore leggings and floor length cardigans. They seemed to favour shorts and sweatshirts (which I thought was an odd combination) and floral dresses with a white t-shirt underneath (which I thought looked ridiculous!) The girls had these really big bangs (fringes) which were sprayed with half a can of hairspray to get them to stand up straight, and every girl sported a pony tail. I hadn’t worn a pony tail since 1985.  The clothes and hairstyles seemed to be very much hinging on the 80’s look. Clearly, they thought I looked equally as odd because I was pretty much always offered a ‘make-over’ when we were going to parties. I accepted the offers, and was promptly decked out ‘a la 80’s’, which I internally cringed at, but condoned because I was desperate to make friends and fit in. However, come the winter I was more than happy to be dressed in whatever fashions that desired so long as they leant me clothes. My meagre cotton cardigans, leather jacket and leggings were no match for the -20 wind chills and 6 months of snow on the ground!  I’ve never been so cold in my life as I was that first winter in New England.

  

They loved Disney movies and we’d all cram into one another’s dorm rooms to watch The Lion King. I found this amusing because in England animated movies were for children only, and adults (without kids) would be laughed at for watching it. They also loved the film Pulp Fiction and it was shown on the campus TV station at least once a month, and then it was broadcast onto the side of a building and the whole campus came out to watch it. I thought the film was meh the first time around, but by the 10^th time I was definitely non-plussed with it! Once a week they all crowded around the one TV in the dorm lounge to watch 90210. I feigned interest, just merely glad for the opportunity to interact with them, but the fact was 90210 had all but died a death in England some years before and no one watched it. Then there was the music. They’d never heard of D:Ream, or East 17, and Meatloaf wasn’t even big on their radar even though he was American. Oh no, they liked Rap and R&B, and very oddly, Billy Joel. So, I was introduced to Piano Man by Billy Joel, which would be sung several times a week (especially when inebriated) and would culminate in a dorm-wide-swaying-hug-a-thon, Boys II Men (whom I thought whined their way through every song), and Salt N Pepa. Now, the latter group I actually came to love, in time. To this day I can’t call shotgun for a car seat without following it up with ‘Bang, what’s up with that thing. I wanna know how does it hang’. Of course these days it’s an internal dialogue.

However, these differences were easily navigated and I was savvy with the dress code and music scene within the first year. The biggest differences, which I found very hard to acclimate to was the food, the drinking age, and the lack of independence.

The food was diabolical to say the least. I can’t bear to hear Americans slag off English food after some of the slop I was forced to digest in those first months. To my English friends - what comes to mind when you’re given the term, ‘Chop Suey?’ A Chinese dish with meat and bean sprouts? Yes, me too. Imagine my surprise when I asked for ‘Chop Suey’ at the University canteen and was given a haphazard hodgepodge of macaroni and a watery tomato sauce. Meatloaf is a vile way of serving barely digestible meat compacted tightly into a bread tin. Sloppy Joes are mince meat in a burger bun and aptly named because after the first bite the meat shoots out of the bun and all down your front. Their Shepherd’s pie has a layer of meat, a layer of sweetcorn, and then a layer of mashed potatoes? What? Who puts sweet corn into a Sheppy Pie?

I thought I might find redemption in their confectionary, but dear God I don’t know how Hershey, the biggest American chocolate company, has managed to stay in business. Their chocolate tastes like the dire chocolate you get in cheap Christmas advent calendars that make you wince every time you eat it, praise God when you only have to have a small bite of it, and vow never to buy a cheap Crimbo calendar again. But, they sold big bars of this stuff, vast quantities of it, and I just couldn’t understand why! 

Even the bread over there was unpleasant. They really process the flour and add sugar so it’s too sweat to be proper bread, but not sweat enough to be Brioche. You’re probably wondering how I survived? Well, I lived on a diet of baked potatoes and bananas and lost 1.5 stones (20 lbs). However, my dorm mates (who all had cars) started taking me with them to local restaurants. Praise the Lord! I finally discovered good, decent American fodder and quickly realised that the noxious nosh I’d been forced to digest previously was contained to the University canteen only. From that point on I cadged any ride I could get to the local supermarkets, and invited myself along to any restaurant outings. I soon discovered however, that one cuisine can be markedly different from country to country. I was so happy when I was taken to my first American Chinese restaurant. I couldn’t wait for some crispy duck, vermicelli, and chow mein. What I got was a pu pu (pronounced poo poo) platter, and let me tell you it was aptly named. It was a big dish with mostly fried and reformed foods on sticks. It all tasted a bit crap, didn’t seem to taste like, or have much semblance to Chinese food and gave me my first introduction to an MSG attack. In later years I came to like some poo poo platters, but always asked for no MSG!

 The drinking age in the USA is 21. I was just 20 when I arrived. I’d been able to drink (legally) since the age of 18 in the UK, but let’s face it, we’re pretty laid back over here about ID’ing and I’d been going to pubs and bars since I was 15. By the time I reached 20 and moved to America I was well aware of my drinking limits, capabilities, and had a range of preferred beverages. All of a sudden I wasn’t allowed to drink at all. The USA is super-super-strict about ID’ing so it was near impossible to get your hands on a drink. Before I moved to America I’d always been able to take, or leave alcohol. It didn’t bother me in the slightest to not drink on a night out. However, now that choice and independence had been taken away from me I suddenly felt very resentful at not being able to have a drink when I wanted, and this then drove a desire to have a drink. The only way I/we could get a drink was to bribe one of the older students to go to the store for you, and invariably they’d come back with an item you wouldn’t consider cleaning your drains with let alone ingesting, but you’d drink it anyway because that was your only option.

In addition to this I missed the pub culture. I’d often meet my friends in England at the pub, have a drink, play some pool. But they have no pub culture in the USA. It’s all bars and nightclubs. Even if there was somewhere akin to a pub I wouldn’t have been allowed in. Not only can you not drink until you’re 21, but you can’t go to the bars, or clubs either. Kindly enough a few of the local nightclubs had under-21 nights a couple of times a week, but you were forced to wear bright neon bracelets that lit up under the fluorescent lights of the club and singled you out. If it was even so much as considered that you might have sneaked a drink at a club you were thrown out and barred.

Now, I’m not saying this next comment as a criticism to the USA, and nor am I saying there maybe a correlation between a 21 age limit and heavy drinking, but I have to acknowledge what I observed. I saw an awful lot of binge drinking in those first few years. Kids who didn’t know how to drink, or what their limits were, would go nuts when they managed to get alcohol and drink themselves into a blind stupor. Now, I know this is normal university behaviour, even for the UK, but I’d never seen it before. I think I can remember twice when I’d seen my friends in England throw up from alcohol in the five years we’d been drinking. It really shocked me. I did notice that in later years of university life (when we were all over 21), that the binge drinking diminished almost in correlation with our increasing ages.

I was introduced to a new type of alcohol by my dorm mate, Jeff - 100 proof Southern Comfort. Of course I’d heard of SoCo before but I had no idea what this 100 proof was. In England we had one percentage and that’s it. So, I drank it as though it was regular SoCo. I’ve never been so ill in all my life and prayed to the porcelain God for almost 24 hours after. I soon learned to check the bottle labels before trying anything again! I was also introduced to a university-specific drink; Punch. Now, because half the campus were too young to go to the bars, house parties were much more prevalent. Each weekend one of the fraternities, or sororities would host a party and everyone was invited. At these parties they would have this Punch. Now, when you think of punch you think of large bowl with a fruit infused cocktail and ice. Hmm. Not quite. This was a rubbish bin (trash barrel) cleaned out (you hoped) and filled with a noxious combination of any alcohol that the frat/sorority could get hold of. Beer, wine, coolers, spirits – it all went in. Then to hide the taste it would be finished off with Kool Aid; a powdered soft drink that only seemed to come in two flavours; grape and cherry and both tasted like Nyquil. This drink became the staple diet of all party goers for the four years of university, and it was utterly vile.

Everyone in America has a car. You just have to. The country is so huge, and they really make use of their landmass, so it’s near impossible to get from there to here (as they say over there). Public transport does its best but given the vast distances to deal with they are rather inadequate, and infrequent. So, if you don’t have a car you’re fairly marooned. And, that’s exactly how I felt. Our campus was in the middle of a forest, near a tiny town; population 11K. The nearest city, Manchester, was 10 miles away. There was a bus from campus that took you there twice a day, but there was no point in going there. Post the 1950’s commercialism boom American inner cities became desolate wastelands given over to ageing record shops and memorabilia stores, whilst megaplexes and malls took over the land masses beyond the city limits. No amount of regeneration ever re-boosted the inner cities. The mall and roads where all the cool shops and restaurants were was 15 miles away, and no buses went there from the campus. You either found a friend with a car who’d be willing to drive you somewhere, or you got campus-fever. I was lucky to live on a dorm with some wonderful and obliging people, but despite their generosity in carting my backside all over town I resented the inability to get up and go whenever I wanted. I hated having to wait for days until someone was making a trip to the mall, or the supermarket to be able to get off campus.

By comparison to my life in the UK I found American teenage life dull, and I found myself becoming increasingly desperate to return to a state of normalcy; to go to the pub with my friends, to have a drink, to drive somewhere, anywhere. The only thing I was really enjoying were my classes. I was doing relatively well considering we spell quite a few things differently, and we have some very different grammar techniques. However, despite my academic enjoyment, the lack of independence, socialising and drinking ability, and the foul tasting canteen food all began to compound and seemed to sit before me each morning like an ever-growing mountain. I would hibernate for hours in my dorm room listening to English music, even late at night when my poor roommate was trying to sleep. I would buy anything from the supermarket that reminded me of home. I should have taken out stocks in Lay’s Salt and Vinegar Chips I ate so much of them. I would spend hours on the phone to my parents begging to come home. By the end of the first semester that mountain had become Everest and was completely insurmountable. I wanted to go home and never come back. So, that’s what I did.

Or, at least that’s what I tried to do. I packed every last thing I owned and took it home with me at Christmas break. I announced to my family upon arrival that I was never going back and took myself off to the pub, in my car, and bought a drink with my friends. I was in heaven.

Turns out my family had some rather different plans and I was forced to return for a second semester. When I say forced, I mean I was literally frog marched to the plane. The only reason I returned was because I was promised that if I was still as miserable at the end of the next semester I could come home. Suddenly, it all started to look much brighter. This was no longer a four year prison sentence, instead I only had to endure four months and then I could come home. I could live through four months, and by ‘eck I was going to have fun in those four months, and so I returned with a different attitude.

During that second semester I joined the drama group, made lots of new friends both American and international, visited Boston and New York, and had an absolute blast. The cold winter finally thawed and the lovely, hot summer days prevailed. Now, if I thought it was cold in their winter, nothing prepared for the sauna that was a New England summer, and once again I found my temperate-climate-induced-wardrobe to be very lacking. Thank goodness for dorm mates that liked to dress me up! The University held concerts, fun days with limo races, balls and dances, and it more than made up for the hibernation of the winter months. By the end of the second semester I’d had so much fun that it felt as though the whole four months had passed in the space of two weeks. It was now time to go home to England for the summer.

During the summer I worked in my family’s company and hated every last moment of it. Whilst I’d been home since the beginning of May my friends didn’t return from their UK universities until July. For two months my social life revolved around my family, and love them as I do, I was unequivocally bored. When my friends finally did come home I found that our worlds were becoming quite separated. I had never heard of some of the music they were listening to, and they thought my new dress sense was a bit outdated. They couldn’t relate to my university experience, as I couldn’t relate to theirs. They talked about the student union £1 shot nights, and I talked about frat parties. By the end of the summer I found I couldn’t wait to get back to America, to see all my friends, to feel something familiar with my own age group again, and to be with people that understood the past year, and all the amazing and wonderful experiences we’d shared. And, of course, I was returning aged 21 so life was going to get a whole lot better!

My 20^th year was by far one of the most rewarding years of my life, and my subsequent years in the USA were some of my best years ever. I feel so humbled and grateful to have been given the chance to go to America and live that experience. But, for every ying there is a yang, and this amazing experience came on the back of some rather un-pleasant years, for which, I feel I would not have been so receptive and grateful for my 20^th year if I hadn’t lived through the bad years first.

To be continued in Part 2...