I stamped your mom's passport

In the past week, two different UK people have mentioned the statistic about what percentage of Americans have passports--one thought it was 5%, another thought it was 10%. I just looked around online and it turns out the figure is closer to 18% or 20%. Which, to me, looks pretty darn good. That's 1 in 5.

My two friends brought up the statistic much in the same way that people trot out that "did you know that you eat x number of spiders during your lifetime" statistic. It isn't necessarily true but it's pervasive. Over here in the UK, it's used partly to support the notion that Americans are a lazy ignernt bunch who can't be bothered to visit other countries because we just think we're better. This is why we don't know anything about the world. And why we shoot people all the time.

Only I don't think that's fair, and I've decided that I'm done hearing that statistic. Here are the reasons why that's not fair:

1. Have you seen how big the US is? It takes enough travelling to see our own country, let alone anyone else's. If a plane leaves an English airport and flies for 3 hours, it's pretty much guaranteed to end up in another country. When I get on a plane in Utah and get off three hours later I'm in Kansas.

2. When my family drove from California to Alaska, we had to go through Canada. None of us had passports, and no one asked to see them. So you don't always need them for Canada.

3. If you include all 50 states, the US can supply pretty much any kind of vacation you're looking for, as long as you're not looking for an international adventure. We have skiing, sunshine, beaches, mountains, long flat stretches of nothing, big cities, etc. That's not to say that our versions are better than what can be found elsewhere, but they're a lot cheaper and a lot more convenient.

4. We don't have as much vacation time as our UK cousins do. A typical job gives you 1 day per month. A great job gives you 2 days per month. That's not a lot of time in which to go see the world.

5. We don't have gap years where we go build bridges in Thailand or feed the yaks in Tibet or whatever people over here get up to before they head off to drink themselves silly at university.

6. As a general rule (please don't email me with exceptions) only well-off families can afford to take all their kids abroad on family vacations. For us middle-classers, that just isn't going to happen. The best you can hope for is to save your pennies and go on an educational tour during high school (coolboy), or perhaps do a study abroad in college (me), or get called to a foreign mission. That's only 2 out of 5 kids in my family who managed to make that work. And then you have the people who are legitimately poor, and passports really aren't high on their priority lists.

7. Travelling abroad is really, really expensive. It's especially expensive for Americans to visit the UK, where the dollar has half the value of the pound. And yet, the UK is pretty much the #1 overseas destination for Americans.

8. It's a lot more feasable for a UK person to wake up on a Friday morning and say, "Screw this, I'm going to Paris for the weekend." They'll even find some great last-minute package deal on the Internet. So of course they'll have a passport at the ready for that sort of thing. We Americans only get passports if we actually think we're going somewhere with them (or if we're just optimistic about that sort of thing.) And we don't plan last-minute trips to Paris unless we happen to have thousands of dollars lying around that we just don't want anymore.

9. For us, I think it's more daunting to just head out there and cross the pond (on either side). It feels like a big commitment, and there's the idea that this may be our One Chance to do this so we'd better make sure it's perfect. I think, though, once you've been once it gets in your blood and you find other opportunities for more travel. It's just a matter of getting out that first time.

10. There is no 10. There is just me saying I'm done hearing about the exaggerated passport statistics thing. Let us have no more of it.

Editor's Postscript:

I've done some more thinking about Point #9. I think this may be where some of the Ugly American behavior comes from, not that I'm condoning Ugly Americans. But if you run across an obnoxious American abroad, it may well be that this is their first trip outside the States. So it's kind of no wonder if we're a bit loud and excited and clueless. I mean really, how cool were you on your first visit to a different country, huh? You have to get the hang of it.

And anyway, some English people shouldn't talk, because loads of them go to places like Ibiza or the Canary Islands and then proceed to spend the whole time eating English breakfasts and watching English television and going clubbing with other English people. That doesn't actually give you any big "Lookit meeee, I'm a world traveller!" points.

Posted in: England