Americans are wimpy babies.

Ruben and I first suspected this when we huffed and puffed our way through a "children's hike" near Gimmelwald, Switzerland, with Rick and Christine. Just the fact that there are nude rugby squads should clinch it that NZ folks are tough. But are people in New Zealand, just plain mean, too?

Consider, if you will, the label on this jar of salt:

Why in the world is this kid chasing what appears to be a chicken with what appears to be a saltshaker? Why would some company use this image as its showpiece on product labels? Have I been adding some kind of chicken repellent to my food? I was really bothered by this, and since I needed a break from copyediting tables comparing biventricular repair to univentricular repair in patients with pulmonary atresia, I decided to look it up.

Good news. At least for me; I'm still not sure about the chickens. When this product was introduced, free-flowing salt was a novelty. Salt crystals, which clump in the presence of moisture in the air, had previously been sold as a block from which the desired portion was scraped.The English company Cerebos innovatively added anti-caking agents that prevented clumping and viola! free-flowing salt. The boy chasing the chicken calls to mind--for locals--an old saying that goes something like, if you're close enough to put salt on the tail of a bird, then you're close enough to catch it. I'm certain the good citizens of the United Kingdom had legitimate reasons for wanting to catch birds. I'm going to leave it at that.

The recurring joke about Americans is that we're pathologically polite: If someone with an Australian, NZ, or (gasp!) a Scottish or Irish accent speaks to an American, the joke goes, the American will say, "Sorry?" about three times, then smile and nod, despite clearly not understanding what was said. I know I'm guilty of this. The BBC equivalent of Jay Leno/David Letterman is Graham Norton. His guests are often a mix of US and UK celebrities. After a UK guest tells a story or whatever, Graham will often look at his US guest(s) and say, "Did you catch any of that?" The US guests usually didn't catch it (this elicits a good laugh from the UK audience). By the way, Kiwis like Americans--"at least you're not Australian"--and people generally appreciate that we're polite (we don't stand in the way of them getting to their seats on planes or buses, and we don't get too close on the beach), but down deep they think we're wimpy babies.