American Excess

During the war in Afghanistan, a Canadian base hosted a Tim Hortons to serve the soldiers. Thus, many of their American counterparts got to see Canadians ordering coffee for the first time, and were thus introduced to the phrase, "Double-Double" (Canadianism for coffee with double cream and double sugar.) Supposedly the American soldiers responded by inventing the "four-by-four," which is four creams and four sugars.

That just seemed excessive to me. It seems like an attitude of "anything you can do I can do better, even if I look foolish and endanger my own health in the process."

That incident came back to me as I was watching the baseball playoffs this week. The Boston Red Sox have been growing beards as a symbol of team unity or a good luck charm or something.  I don't know if it was directly inspired by the hockey tradition of playoff beards, but it's already gone further. The Sox are now more hirsute than a veteran hockey player after the NHL's marathon postseason. 

Like the double double, hockey playoff beards were pushing the bounds of sensibility already. Yet when Americans get involved, they have to take it even further too far. I wouldn't mind so much except that their excess causes us to keep thinking of ourselves as sensible, even when we're only sensible by comparison.