The man in the shop looked on, his smile becoming increasingly waxy, as I tried again and again to swipe my card to pay for my purchase. Every now and again he would say, in a dull unbelieving voice, "No, insert your card please," and I would swipe again. We stood there, trapped in a loop, for about a day and a half.
Chip & Pin! Yes, of course, the card goes in like that. But definitely not a new thing, definitely introduced in the UK before I left. I had just forgotten. And this doesn't matter either, wouldn't matter, except for the fact that I had no obvious excuse.
In America, my accent allows me to be ignorant of all sorts of things. I can ask stupid questions all day long and people are delighted to help. But when I stood there in the shop, with my British accent and my British bank card, the man had no reason to assume I had been America for three years. In his eyes I was just an idiot who bumbled along not knowing how to buy things.
And then sometime later, I had to navigate a mini roundabout. Total chaos. Worse because there are roundabouts in America (some in New England and two in Houston if you can believe such a thing) but, of course, they spin the other way, like the fabled antipodean plug holes.
These were just hurdles and I'm over them now, having reasserted submerged behaviours. But I did not expect coming back home to pose such problems, that familiar and known things could be obstacles. I shouldn't have to work things out like I'm in a foreign country.
But I do.
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