Cultural Divide #269

I've found yet another cultural divide.  And the only upside is that it has nothing to do with penises.

Allow me to set the scene:

Saturday night we're at a private party - a friend rented out a small restaurant (the entire place was smaller than most of your living rooms) and packed it with friends who ate dinner and danced to live music performed by a band.  They gave us an excellent show filled with crowd pleasers like "Sweet Home Alabama" and Katy Perry's "Hot and Cold".  It was a truly awesome atmosphere - like back in your 20's at an apartment party with the music cranked up and people dancing their asses off!

So far, so good - right?

Well, V and I were two of only 3 Americans in the bunch.  The rest were 99% Brits with the occasional Aussie and European mixed in.  (As you may have guessed from my karaoke post, music is the great spotlight under which cultural differences are magnified.  The karaoke crowd went wild over Spice Girls songs I'd never heard of in my life.  Meanwhile, the list of 3,000 songs included only two from Prince!)

When the band started playing "Mony, Mony" I assumed  the dirty lyrics that I've sang since middle school were universal.  Everyone's whipped up in a frenzy, dancing around like maniacs and when the time comes, I scream at the top of my lungs, "Hey, hey what - get laid, get f*cked."  Since we're all basically in a living room, everyone kind of stares at me while still dancing.  My friends in the band - also British and who witness me shouting something, invite me up to say them in the mic.

I should have read that first reaction from the crowd and demurred, but instead - feeling the high of "Mony, Mony" I run up and re-scream the dirty refrain into the microphone.  Now, instead of mildly confused looks, I have an entire crowd of people who've essentially stopped dancing and cocked their heads trying to understand what I'm saying (much like our pug does when we talk to him).  Can you say BUZZ KILL??

The gracious (British) host of the event ran over and tried to jump in and sing the lyrics with me (bless her heart!), but instead she sang "Hey, hey what - get married, get f*cked."  :)

Where were my fellow American compatriots, you ask.  V was mysteriously in the bathroom and the other American in the group never left her seat in the back of the room.  She sure as heck wasn't going to share my humiliation!