British Men Don't Wear Wedding Rings

It's odd what is assumed in London. All men are happily married with two kids. The Tube is a sacred place reserved for reading and watching dark tunnels go by. All people can navigate a sidewalk, even when staring intensely at phone screens and iPods.

I first noticed this phenomenon when a middle aged couple, clearly tourists and clearly American, got on the Tube. The bright pastels and large camera hung around the neck isn't, strangely, what gave them away. Rather, it was the gold band on the left hand of the man. Only after did I notice their day passes and vaguely Neutral American dialects. Isn't it interesting what people feel they have to show the rest of the world? Europeans, so far as I have observed, don't feel this need too strongly. Men go around unburdened by rings (though women do sport rather hefty rocks) and little is said. I couldn't help but wonder if this becomes a problem, say, in a pub.

Here, people seem to be content by what should be, rather than what may be. In America, it is just the opposite. Splashed everywhere are warnings and caution signs. Little credit is given to common sense. In London, it seems few feel the need to scribble graffiti on the Tube windows. What does it really accomplish, anyway?

Little does London know, however, that we are taught at IC to live in the present. It makes sense, after-all. What's done is done, and we must live with the aftermath, for good or bad. It strengths our resolve to do what makes us happy and puts us in the scene with our partner so we can't shy away from the given circumstances, however uncomfortable. But I've noticed a rather different sentiment here. A sentiment I'm not sure I totally understand. A sentiment vaguely resembling living in the future.

It's a hard concept to grasp. How can we experience something that hasn't happened yet? I'm not pretending to have the answer. That's not what this post is about. In fact, I may end up talking myself in circles only to arrive at the same answer I would have had I taken the opposite approach.

I'm married with children, but no one has made a pass at me yet.
I've taken the Circle Line for twenty years and it's been (relatively) quiet all that time.
I've sent 33 texts and haven't bumped into a small child once.

It quickly becomes about the reaction when something does happen, rather than the something that did. Outside acting class, in the "real world," impulses are squashed every day because of moral and ethical dilemmas. But a dilemma only surfaces, only becomes real, when another is influenced by that dilemma. In America we wait for the impending doom. In London they embrace it. And I have to say, I like that approach.

Stopping at a pub this evening after seeing a show, I wasn't worried what would happen after a few pints. Instead, I was laughing and joking with friends. I learned the British can't make chicken wings to save their lives, but a bartender who asks "Want me to let the Guinness settle a bit?" before pouring the second half of the glass is a true gem. I didn't worry about the pints on the Tube ride home, or as I walked through the dark streets of Fulham, past the alcove where I know sketchy things await. I didn't even worry about the pints as I wrote, edited, and read over this post.

I only worried about them as I pressed "Publish."

Shit.