Not Your Typical Czech

One of the things that I love and hate about the Czech republic is how together certain people are. There is a certain type of Czech person that is so practical, it is infuriating. I admire them, but it is almost painful to be around them. They are not arrogant: they are so used to being the right, that it rolls right off them.

I am usually met by these people with stares of incomprehension and somtimes pure disbelief. My whimsical ways baffle them. My total disregard for innane minutia frustrates them. But I can always deflect any situation by claiming ignorance or just pure immaturity.

When in these situations I usually let a little boyish smile creep out and that gets me "the look".

"The look" is a held-back smile with a slight head tilt, followed by a very tight little "no" shake of the head, kind of like the one your mom might give you when you are looking at the candy bins at the supermarket, only nicer. Sometimes a finger shaking is added for good measure. When it is a young lady doing it, it seems like borderline flirting. But guys do it to, so the perception of flirting is probably just my cultural bias being applied to a foreign situation.

I get the look from my accountant all the time, but it doesn't feel like flirting. She is much older than I and we are from different planets.

The reason I need to describe her is to get ahold of the essence of a type of person that I encounter here daily, but are still almost like aliens to me. She is not typical by a long shot, but she embodies the practicality that is an unalienable part of almost all Czech people that I know. She takes this practicality to its logical end.

I will call her Ann. Ann is 46 years old. She dresses smart, does her hair and is always on time. She is pleasant but very concentrated on her work. Her desk is immaculate. She drinks only water and natural teas depending on the season or if there is a call for something special. Ann uses teas as remedies as do many Czechs. She knows about herbs, plants, flowers and trees. She knows about gardening. She knows about accounting. Other than that, I really haven't found anything else that she knows about extensively. I had to provide her with a list of EU countires, for exapmle.

Ann brings her lunch from home everyday. Often, the food is from her garden. She eats fresh fruit and home cooked food exclusively. She lives a few miles away and usually walks home from work unless her husband picks her up. She has been married 20 years and happily so. She has a grown daughter and a young teenage son.

One could say that Ann is an environmentalist. She takes recycling to a whole new level. She has no less that 7 different recycling piles at home, and she takes things from the office back with her. Not the paper and magazines (two different items, of course), but little things like the creamers, those tiny little plastic containers full of cream that you need at least 5 of for a large to-go coffee. She removes the foil from the top, cleans both the foil and the plastic cup and recycles them seperately. She takes my water bottles, that I would recycle whole, at cuts the little plastic ring off and recyles the ring and the cap seperate from the bottle. Then she removes the cellophane label and throws that away because you can't recycle cellophane. I believe her when she says that. As she explains to me the various divisions of papers and plastics and metals I notice that aluminium is not included. Ann would never buy anything in an aluminum can. That would be wasteful.

As I gawk in amazment, she tells me, "Michael, it will do the earth good!"

One day when we were celebrating a birthday at the shop, the conversation started going around about what we had done when we were in our late-teens that our parents didn't know. A few had older kids who had come home from the club at 2am. (Yes, the clubs here are full of teenage kids. 18 drinking age, but it is pretty lax.) Ann said that she had an incident when her daughter came home after midnight, and that her son would not be interested in such things. She believed it.

I asked her what she would do if her son came home drunk at four in the morning? She said, he wouldn't. I pretended to believe her, but pressed, just for conversational value. The other employees were rivited with what she would say. A blank look washed across her face. She considered her options and said sheepishly, "ground him untill he is 18? Really I have no idea."

I felt a little bad, but since this was a rare opportunity I told her about sneaking out of my parents house and joy-riding the family car down to the beach with my friends when I was about her son's age. She looked at me in complete shock.

I let a little boyish smile creep out and she gave me "the look".

She thought I had made it up.