Mara Colter

In a world where you can be anything.....be kind. ❤️💜🧡

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

CONFESSION: A grown Japanese man SOBBED at YOUR fireworks last night.

That man was me. Zero shame.

Because every July 4th, my heart flies back to March 11.
Your sailors—YOUR sons and daughters—
standing on deck INSIDE the radiation zone,
wrapping blankets around shivering strangers.

We were those strangers.
NOW WE ARE FAMILY.

Cry with me, America. It's your 250th birthday. 🎆😭🇺🇸

[iPaul @iPaulCanada]

哈兰德逛着逛着就进球了

[Josh McCuistion @Josh_Scoop]

Filed under things I would have NEVER been able to predict.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Waffle House at three in the morning. I ordered hash browns. The waitress, Charlene, turned toward the kitchen and shouted.

"Scattered, smothered, covered!"

I rose from my stool.

These were battle commands. Shouted across a room, fast, in code, the way a captain calls a line into position. Something was happening. I prepared myself.

"Who is under attack?" I asked.

Charlene turned back. "Huh? Oh. That's just your hash browns, baby."

I sat back down slowly. "...The potatoes have their own commands?"

"Mhm. Scattered means on the grill. Smothered's onions. Covered's cheese."

"And there are more?"

She counted them off without looking at a menu. "Chunked is ham. Diced is tomato. Peppered's jalapeños. Capped's mushrooms. Topped's chili. Country's sausage gravy."

I was silent for a moment. Nine words. Nine fates, for one potato.

In my homeland, a man earns a name through a lifetime of deeds. Here, a hash brown can earn nine in a single night. I had badly underestimated this country.

"I want all of them," I said. "Every word. The potato has earned them."

"...You want it all the way?"

"All the way. To give it fewer would be an insult."

Charlene shouted the whole thing back into the kitchen, the full litany, and the cook answered without turning around, and I stood again and bowed to him, sergeant to sergeant. He did not see it. It did not matter. I knew.

It came buried. Onions, cheese, ham, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, chili, gravy. You could barely find the potato underneath, which seemed correct, because by then the potato was no longer a side dish. It was a decorated soldier.

I ate the whole thing with a fork in both fists. It was hot and filthy and magnificent. I have eaten in palaces. I have never eaten anything that was honored this thoroughly.

So tell me, America.

You can shout the same potato into nine different lives.

Who wrote this language, and where can a foreigner learn it?

And the cook who answers in code at three in the morning. Is that a kitchen, or a war room?

[Lexi Cothran @LexiCothran]

Three hours ago, I had no idea what the Tartan Army was.

I am now emotionally invested in the Scots, the Algerians, the Japanese, the Dutch, a German guy named Freddy, and apparently the entire World Cup.

I fear I have become a soccer (*cough* “football”) fan against my will.

[Playteaux @Playteaux1]

Is the US going to play England on July 4th? This would be EPIC.

[Playteaux @Playteaux1]

Vive l'Amérique

[Paul White Gold Eagle @PaulGoldEagle]

Europeans discovering America is some of the best content of the internet right now:

[Mara Colter @maracolter]

@FreddyLA7 @houstonpolice Following your journey in our amazing country has been the highlight of my entire year!! Thank you for bringing smiles to the faces of millions of Americans!!!!

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Ben Chase @BenGChase]

We have Italians discovering free refills,
Japanese discovering unlimited chips and salsa, and Germans road tripping the country becoming Ella Fellas.

In this USA 250 simulation, it’s quite simple, we’re winning the World Cup.

[Stars n Stripes FC 🇺🇸 @starsnstripesfc]

Boomers and Europeans will try to tell you this country doesn’t care about football. DON’T LISTEN 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[Dante 🇺🇸 @DanteTheDon]

This is so awesome

[USMNT Only @usmntonly]

The European mind is starting to comprehend

[God @TheTweetOfGod]

I didn't know I was a Knicks fan.

[ًًً @_captainpulisic]

“you’re more american if you’re not born over there bc you had the choice to choose and you chose america.” that is so powerful.

[Path To Manliness @PathToManliness]

Palette cleanser

Buc-ee's isn't a gas station.

It's a monument to American excess.

You stop for gas and somehow leave with a brisket sandwich, a bag of beaver nuggets, beef jerky, a Yeti cooler, a cast iron skillet, three t-shirts, and enough snacks to survive a minor apocalypse.

The bathrooms are cleaner than most hospitals.

The brisket is chopped fresh in front of you.

The drink selection is measured in acres.

And the parking lot looks like someone accidentally built an airport in rural Texas. It’s genuinely shocking when you first see the line of gas pumps

What makes Buc-ee's great isn't the food.

It's the ambition.

Somebody looked at a normal gas station and said:

"What if we made it 10 times bigger, 10 times cleaner, 10 times friendlier, and sold literally everything?"

That's America.

Not doing the minimum.

Not making things smaller.

Not apologizing for success.

Building something so ridiculously over-the-top that people drive an extra hour just to experience it.

European tourists spend years dreaming about seeing the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and New York City.

Then they accidentally discover Buc-ee's and spend 45 minutes taking pictures of a convenience store.

Because deep down they know they're witnessing something special.

A place where a man can buy diesel fuel, smoked brisket, hunting gear, fudge, a swimsuit, and a 64-ounce Moutain Dew in one stop.

If you drive past a Buc-ee's without stopping, you're missing one of the great modern American cultural experiences.

The Founding Fathers didn't cross the Delaware for this.

But they'd probably appreciate the brisket.

[Scottish Banter @1scottishbanter]

Introducing the Scottish-American travel dictionary 🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

We’ve put together this guide to keep the Tartan Army out of trouble in the States.

Read carefully to avoid confusing the locals, deeply offending the country, or being interrogated by Homeland Security over a sandwich.