A 24 or 12 hour clock and bubbles

 

 At 19 I was living at university but an overprotective mother was still controlling my coming and goings. I needed to check in every day when I got back to the dorm. I did get grounded when she called back once later after we'd talked to see I had left again.

My then boyfriend wanted to take me to Attleboro to meet his parents, about an hour and half drive.

"Absolutely not," my mother said. I didn't go.

Why am I telling you this.

Because one year to the day I didn't go to Attleboro, my father and stepmom kissed me goodbye on the deck of the ship USS America. I was off to two years in Germany to join my army husband stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Perhaps if I'd gone to Attleboro, I wouldn't have married the man who would have opened the door from the protected atmosphere where I was raised.

To someone who couldn't even go into Boston, 12 miles from my hometown, never mind the drive from Lowell where I was in School to Attleboro, crossing the Atlantic was incredible.

During that first trip when I'd never been in Boston on my own, I found myself in Paris train station after a train trip from Le Havre. I managed to buy a ticket for the night train to Stuttgart. It was leaving at 23:00H it said. I did understand the word "depart" on the ticket.

What the hell was 23H?

After telling a Frenchman, I spoke French but he didn't, he patiently explained in a sexy accent about the 24 hour clock. One after noon was 13H, two was 14H, etc.

That was my first realization that things I thought were the same the world over weren't. Alphabet letters have different names, a typewriter keyboard is arranged differently for different languages, Playing cards are not the same, 8 and a half by 11 paper is rare in most of the world which uses A4 as the standard. I wasn't 5 foot 1 but over here I'm 153 centimeters and on and on.

Many decades later I live in Europe and have hopped across the ocean more times than I can count. Where my first trips were exciting later ones are something to be gotten through. 

I forgot the first European trip is still a big deal for others until I was on a Boston-London flight with  a group of American teenagers who were making fun of the way things were spelled. I pointed out that this was a British airplane and that the words were correct British spelling. "You mean they don't spell the way we do," one gasped. This is why everyone should get out of the bubble they live in and see things taken for granted aren't global. 

I'm glad my bubble burst.