Bananas in Winter

I don’t need a calendar to tell me it’s the end of November. I can decipher this well enough from the patter of petty thoughts through my brain. They try to convince me that my adoptive countrymen have it out for me: from the person who didn’t say ‘sorry’ when they bumped into me in the hallway, to the acquaintance who didn’t ‘see’ me behind the banana display at the grocery store. It’s very possible that people become less social in winter—some kind of energy conservation may be in the works. But surely this can’t account for my impression that I’m being passive-aggressively bad-vibed out of the country?

Aside from the Jansson’s Temptation incident at last year’s jul smörgåsbord (a dish riddled with hateful, covert anchovies), my delusions of persecution generally focus on social interactions. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. If you’ve been to North America you’ll know we’re generally very talky people. Whether you’re waiting for a bus, consulting your tourist-map, or taking an elevator one floor, somebody will doubtless engage you in conversation. They’ll all have relatives, friends, or favourite hockey players from Sweden. They’ll interrupt you to ask what language you’re speaking, and then tell you it’s always been their dream to go to Switzerland. The shop clerks will all ask how you’re day is going, and none will want an honest answer.
On a visit to Canada, this last example of small-talk drove a Swedish friend of mine bonkers. He was on a store-to-store quest after a Swedish-type dish-washing brush to replace the ragged wash cloths moldering by my sink. And he was being hampered by How-dee-doos. Just answer ‘Fine, thanks’. They don’t really care, I said. But this only convinced him further that the clerks were members of the same heartless faction who had closed down the city’s IKEA a decade earlier. And whose sole aim it was to impede his quest after a simpler, more straightforward—not to mention more sanitary—way of life.

I can relate to my friend’s bewilderment over the social differences between our cultures. It’s true that North Americans don’t engage in small-talk just to be ‘nice’ and ‘polite.’ Deep down, I think it’s our way of feeling secure with strangers. By engaging someone in conversation, you notice immediately if the person is normal, or, say, about to hold the bus hostage with the aid of a banana and their imaginary Octopus friend, Larry. The same goes for the typical ‘hellos’ and eye-contact we share when we pass one another along a narrow sidewalk or pathway. This is how we signal that we’re safe.
Perhaps you can anticipate the culture crash ahead. While my friend experienced an overwhelming breech of his private mental space in Canada, in Sweden, when I wander downtown amongst strangers in the winter darkness, I start to believe I’m that ghost character in the movie who people walk straight through and say, Brrrr What was that? Intellectually, I know this is all perfectly polite in Sweden; you don’t go around imposing yourself on people, and forcing them into positions where they have to talk and react to you. I now pity the Swedish strangers who I prattled away next to on the bus, not noticing how they shifted nervously in their seats, how they craned their necks about searching for my personlig assistent. But maybe this is why the saffron buns and pepparkakor turn up this time of year: they’re excuses for tea-candle lit fikas with friends and co-workers—who can see one another.