Dear World: I Have Questions About These Policies

Things that should be hard are terrifyingly easy, while things that should be easy are, well, terrifyingly hard.

I’m Ash, and I’m a writer, traveler, nonconformist & nomad, and every week I’m sharing funny field notes from around the world. Currently, I’m in America writing about what it’s been like to return home to my small town, twenty years after living abroad.

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America is funny: things that should be hard are terrifyingly easy, while things that should be easy are, well, terrifyingly hard.

For example, you’ve got drive-thru beer stores, drive-thru emergency rooms, drive-thru funeral parlors, drive-thru strip clubs, and drive-thru weddings.

And yet, I cannot get a beer at McDonald’s.

Did you know you can get a beer at McDonald’s in Germany? And Greece? And Sweden? And Italy? When I lived in Chile, you could get ‘em at any fast food chain…even in mall food courts. (Especially in mall food courts. Just think of all those 12-year-olds in crop tops.)

I can also buy an island, a Mercedes, a $40 million Gulfstream private jet, and gaggles of prohibited drugs entirely online, but try to send a wire to your mortgage company, and YOUR BANK IS GONNA BE PISSED. Raise the red flags, there is some real suspicious activity going on here, let’s make ‘em drive three hours to come into a branch.

A child with the emotional maturity of a mop can also get a driver’s permit at age sixteen (16), while I, age 39, practically need to pay off a local official in the middle of a field on the third day of the blood moon in the month of February just to get issued a permit to install a new drainage pipe in my driveway.

Another one I enjoy?

Taxes. Why is this so hard? I called the IRS one day and they wanted to know whether I had submitted form XY74901T03B42, and I was like shoot, I’m not familiar with that one, can you give me a hint???????? And they were like, VERMIN! IF YOU DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER YOU’RE CLEARLY A CATATONIC PEASANT, PLEASE EXCUSE ME WHILE I POWDER MY NOSE UPON MY GOLD-LEAF EXECUTIVE CHAIR I PAID FOR WITH MY BONUS. (Using form 72RXF91048G.)

Another fun-filled weirdly dramatic activity: renting a car.

Drivers must be twenty-five years of age, have a valid driver’s license, have a major credit card (with $300,000 available credit), maintain a spot-free driving record with no incidents in the past 36 months, present two forms of photo ID, be able to recite the national anthem on command, have four sets of step parents willing to co-sign, and be willing to stand in a 3-hour line full of hot and sweaty middle-aged men who are renting a car to go see their “love match” in Tampa, Florida.

I could rent a Russian rocket ship for less hassle.

Which is actually what prompted this entire post: the fact that I did.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly a RUSSIAN ROCKET SHIP (or even a Russian, or even a rocket, or even a ship), but it practically felt like one. Suddenly, there was this glorious piece of heavy machinery sitting in my backyard. And suddenly I realized:

This is bananas.

What I rented is an excavator. Do you know what these things are capable of?! They’re like having a set of god’s hands to do your bidding: knock down that tree! dig up that stump! move that rock! make a thirty-foot ditch!

Excavating the fuck out of the backyard at the farmhouse

This is a serious piece of construction machinery.

There are pedals. And there are knobs. And there are levers. And there are giant buckets. And big hammers. And bulldozer blades. And hydraulic lines. And the very real chance of tipping this thing over on a hill. (Yes we almost did…multiple times.)

The average person has no friggin’ clue how to operate one of these things.

And yet!

I was able to rent this 12,000-pound destruction machine for 3 days—and have it hand-delivered right to my front door!—with absolutely no credentials, no proof of driver’s license, no credit card down, no operating experience, no insurance, and literally no instructions on how to use the damn thing.

Plop.

There it was dropped in the front lawn. I signed on the dotted line. And then the driver left. And then I cried.

He’s like, lemme just leave this here with you…good luck

I’m just kidding, I didn’t cry, because I am smart enough to hire people who know how to run these things. But, that’s besides the point! I wasn’t required to. Me, Ash Ambirge, in all my 5’3” glory, entirely incapable of cooking a grilled cheese without burning it, and entirely incompetent at dribbling a basketball, and definitely someone who, once in high school, actually looked at a water bottle with giant pieces of ice in it and said “but, how’d you get the ice in there???????”…was given possession of $50,000 piece of heavy instruction equipment without so much as a blink.

This is why I love America.

They won’t give you a beer with your fries, but for the low, low cost of $850 USD, you, too, can indulge in a little playful round of death-by-user-error roulette…so long as you don’t pay for it with a wire.

But feel free to take it through any drive-through you want!

So long as you can figure out how to drive it, that is.