Today is November 9th

...which reminds me that another thing that differentiates the U.S. from much of the rest of the world is the way we write the date.

Let me explain. Today, as I started to say, is November 9th in the wonderfully positive year of 2019 (I'm hallucinating about the qualities of the year) and we in the U.S. would write this on our slates (anybody remember slates?) as 11/9/2019 and not be reminded of anything. The rest of you, for the most part, would write it as 9/11/2019 and not be reminded of anything either.

But an American seeing 9/1l on a page is suddenly reminded of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 when nearly 3,000 people died and two very large and prominent buildings in New York City came crashing down, all 110 stories of them.

We write dates as mm/dd/yyyy and you write dates as dd/mm/yyyy.

There are other things that separate us.

We drive on the right side of the road and you drive on the left side.

We either simplify or mangle spelling, depending on one's point of view, by writing favor, honor, neighbor, maneuver, theater, center and so forth. You write favour, honour, neighbour, manoeuvre, theatre, centre and so forth.

We say to-MAY-to and you say to-MAH-to.

We never mix peas and mashed potatoes together on a plate and you do it all the time.

I could go on and on.

We are different, and yet we are so very much alike.

Here are some things that unite us.

We both put our trousers on one leg at a time. (Note. I once heard a chap say, “Burt Reynolds puts his pants on the same way you and I do” and the second chap said “Yes, but he gets to do it more often.”)

Moving right along....

If someone pricks us, we bleed (Shakespeare pointed this out as well).

We laugh, we weep, we mourn, we dance.

There is nothing new under the sun, drones in the sky notwithstanding.

This post is as jumbled as most of the ones I write.

You should be used to it by now.

Tell me in the comments some other ways we are different and some other ways we are alike. Remember to keep it clean as this is a family blog.