Well mk, people on this coast are enormous babies.

If someone is standing on your foot, etiquette here would require you to say, "excuse me, sorry to bother you, but you are standing on my foot."

If you were to say,"Hey! Get off my fucking foot!" You would have to listen to at least an hour of explanation on how no one meant to stand on your foot and that it really hurt their feelings to be asked not to stand in feet in that manner with such strong language.

Next thing you know I find I'm trying to figure out if I'm supposed to apologise for having got my foot stepped on.

I'll give you an precise example. The other day, someone close to me was ruining some of my things. Of course I said, "Stop doing that to my things, you'll ruin them!" She stopped but gave me a hurt look and sulked away. A few days later my wife said, "You know, when she was destroying your things, she didn't realize it and you needn't have said it like that." Names and things obscured to protect the innocent but the real problem was I didn't apologize at the start of objecting to my shit getting destroyed.

Now being that you are a good midwestern, who's also lived on the East coast you wouldn't think about apologizing to someone who is standing on your tits, but that's exactly how it's supposed to be done out here.

Sometimes I'm an asshole but other times I am, without malice, very direct and it's taken awful hard.

If there is an upside to all this it's that people are very aware of the violence of language and attitude and I've learned a great deal about all the subtle ways we go at each other that I might not have learned if I lived in another place. I'm still learning it today.

Another upside is that if you need to get something done or you have found yourself in the middle of something or in a bit of a tight spot, people here are easy to bully. You can bully and bluster your way out of most things if needs be.

Oregon my Oregon!