7 Outdoor Objects I Never Saw Before Moving to America

hello I'm Lawrence and I'm on a quest to uncover all of the memos that Britain and America lost in the pond and speaking of lost I'm start I'm starting to lose my marbles being in quarantine so long and being here for now I think is eight days I've been giving some thought to some of the things that I miss about the outside world and you know I'm not just talking about sort of fast-food joints that a difference in both countries but sort of just really random mundane objects you know like a wheelbarrow for example or not I'm not suggesting we don't have wheelbarrows in England that's just that's an example of a mundane object and I want to talk about specifically seven of those objects that I haven't seen until I moved to America yep I'm really longing for those water towers steel water towers specifically because we do have water towers in Britain but they're concrete and look really brutalist and like they were made in the 60s in America all across the country they have these kind of water towers that are just there in the middle of nowhere usually and they're made of steel and on the facade of them they have the name of the town and it's usually something like snakes Ville and you never see anybody near them or in them I don't know what they'll be doing in them perhaps replenishing the water I don't know how water towers work I just know that America has a lot of them and you see them when you're on the highway motorway just like our next entry yes highway based billboards who would have thought I certainly wouldn't have until I moved to the United States and that's because we don't really have them in Britain we do have them in city centres but you're not gonna find them on the side of the road you know because it's distracting especially when it says something you know profound like Jesus has risen you're gonna take notice of that and you know crash into the car in front of you and if you don't have insurance then you are screwed ironically a lot of the billboards are for insurance so at least you know who to call I joked a moment ago about the kinds of things you might see on American Highway billboards but the truth is anyone can really get an ad on those things they often say advertise here if there's nothing on it and unless you have a no heart and be a death wish you also wouldn't want to crash into the back of one of these yellow school buses I didn't grow up here as a child so of course I never got to ride one probably never will unless I become a bus driver or a parent on some sort of school trip do they do that I don't know but the fact of the matter is growing up I did see school buses yellow school buses in films like Superman and Forrest Gump those are just examples of films but you know I didn't think they existed in real life this was quite a revelation to me they're everywhere you know it's not just it's not just in Indiana where I lived it's also in Chicago it's in it's everywhere I mean you do see these yellow school buses everywhere and I recognize that the majority of my audience is American and this is probably profoundly weird to hear somebody talk about how yellow school buses are very widespread in this country but I don't think they're used anywhere else in the world or at least to my knowledge they're certainly not used in Britain I used to get to school by jogging that's not true I did take the bus but it was one of those sort of stagecoach buses double-decker so I've got to sit on top not at the back with the cool kids you know at the front actually and but they weren't yellow and I'm I as you can see I like yellow and wearing this in solidarity with the school children and now it's just it's the first thing I found in my wardrobe I'd be lying if I said that yellow school buses were the only outdoor object that I learned through the films that also applies to our next entry white picket fences the like of which you see in the film American Beauty and other such suburban based films it's I mean it reminds me of American suburbia now that I've lived here long enough but for the longest time you know it was just part of the sort of movie set for me to make something look very pristine and idyllic and all of that you'll occasionally see white picket fences here in different parts of Chicago the kind of rare I suppose but you do tend to see them at houses of families who've really taken care of their garden okay and in Britain we don't have these kind of fences a lot of our gardens are sort of framed off by brick walls or sometimes just shrubs and bushes and things that that's not a euphemism you'll also see in the u.s. mesh fences around gardens as well they're kind of low down you know that they're just high enough that dogs can jump over them but ever do because they're too stupid and they seem like they're there to just sort of stop people from breaking in especially those fences that have beware of the dog on the side now please America or anyone watching this don't take this is a green light I think you can go and burgle people's houses in Britain that they still have security measures and and fences - I'm I'm underplaying it but we don't have white picket fences we also don't have these allow me to clarify our houses do have mailboxes in the United Kingdom except our mail doesn't go into a mailbox it goes into a letterbox and our Mail's called the post I hope that was clear and those letter boxes are usually on the front door right so Letterman or postman that's Letterman is a chat show host postman post women post people right they have to go right up to the door and become intimate with your house not so in the United States or at least not always you will have those kind of houses where just in front of their garden or yard they'll have a mailbox that's sticking on kind of a pole and there's just this this tube I suppose a metal tube into which you put things and then people have to go out and get I suppose it does it does promote exercise which is needed in these these quarantine days and we just don't wanna come into contact with the post people or mail people it doesn't matter what you call them they're the same entity that were the different people you get the point basically don't touch the post people and if you do wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap making sure not to get your water from one of these I'll tell you a story when I was 19 years old I was a big gamer I was well into video games and one of the video games that I played was a little game called die hard with a vengeance and you're just swooning around New York City I think probably and you can crash your car into just stuff right and one of those stuff was a fire hydrant a very American looking fire hydrant that looks like this they're more or less cylindrical speaking in a pitch that only dogs recognize and I only describe them as that to differentiate them from fire hydrants in Britain fire hydrants in Britain are no way near as sexy and believe me I didn't think I'd wake up today and say that either they're just these brutalist looking square things with an H on them and no they're not for landing miniature helicopter nor do they signify hospital I I actually don't know what they do if a fire breaks out in the middle of the road when does that ever happen I wouldn't know what to do I don't know how to operate these things right who does the experts where as American fire hydrants are absolutely gorgeous they kind of look like they kind of look like elongated firemen helmets was that on purpose again for the benefit of the dogs it can't have been and I'm absolutely certain I wouldn't have made the correlation had I not been stuck in here for eight days I'm going mad you know how does the outside world look right now to people do people still have wind chimes to do they still you know do they still raise these the American flag and I suppose there's a very good reason as to why you know I didn't encounter this until I moved to America and it's because it's America's flag you know so that makes total sense right off the bat I think in Britain pound-for-pound we probably or at least when I lived there didn't fly the flag the British flag as much as America tends to fly its flag it's very culturally ingrained to do that isn't it my in-laws doors everybody does it even educated fleas do it that's that would be impossible they don't have the strength to lift up fabric but they're bloody smart hence being educated I don't know how I got sidetracked there but yes the US flag is absolutely everywhere again this is not just something you'll see in films and I think there's an understanding that Americans are deeply patriotic slash patriotic how how do you pronounce it let me know in the comments below and it's not just outside of people's houses that you'll see these flags you'll see them on the back of trucks you'll see them hanging on sort of company buildings don't know why I pronounced it like that and and just sort of everywhere I mean it really is everywhere sometimes you'll see absolutely huge American flags and you can usually see them for about five miles away that way at least you know what country you're in and so that's it seven outdoor objects I only encountered after moving to America I just wanted to list those to remind us of what we're missing I mean admittedly we're missing quite a bit more than those things don't forget to follow me on Twitter at lost in the pond us if you want more weird information like this and don't forget to subscribe to my channel so that my videos don't get lost in the pond and as ever a big shout-out to all of my patrons who make these videos possible without them I wouldn't have any of this right these videos wouldn't exist anymore I would have given up two years ago I certainly wouldn't have this nice new camera so thank you again patrons if you would like to become a patron of lost in the pond you can do so at patreon.com slash lost in the pond until next time stay well keep washing your hands and keep watching my videos thank you for watching this episode of lost in the pond don't forget to hit my stupid little face to subscribe and please share this video with the world hit me up on Twitter Instagram and Facebook and if you would like to support this channel please do so at patreon.com slash lost in the pond [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Lost in the Pond

Views: 762,720

Keywords: Finding America, US Travel, Laurence Brown, Objects, Outdoor, Fire Hydrants

Id: iDXXXsMOkUo

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/_Punko_]

Most of these are here in Canada, although not so much with the white picket fences.

And certainly not the completely insane amount of flag flying that is in the US.

There are a substantial number of things you'd find in the UK that we don't find outside in North America.

[u/Woodyville06]

I didn’t make it all the way through that. He was just too annoying.