Culture clash

I got another small lesson yesterday in cultural misunderstandings.

I was leading the music in church yesterday, accompanied by my trusty organist for the day, Ansgar. He's German, not American (which is relevant to the story). We ran out of time for the last hymn, so the bishop signaled to Ansgar that we should only sing one verse. I was busy with the kids and didn't see the exchange of signals.

As Ansgar was getting ready to start the introduction to the hymn, he gave me the "thumbs up" sign and made sure that I saw the sign. I was puzzled by this, because I've always been ready to lead when it's time, but I nodded to let him know that yes, I was ready to lead the hymn.

The first verse went just fine, and I launched into the second verse as I had planned. Ansgar then had to verbally tell me that we were only doing one verse. I cut off the hymn, quickly sat down, and temporarily pretended that I didn't exist. (I think it worked.)

It took me a couple of minutes of pondering to figure out what went wrong. After all, I've usually known when we were supposed to do only one verse. It finally dawned on me: when an American wants to indicate one of something, as in one drink or one movie ticket, he holds up a closed fist, with the back of the hand facing him and with the index finger extended so that it points straight up. However, when a European wants to indicate one of something, he uses a closed fist with an extended thumb, not an extended index finger. Ansgar wasn't giving me the "thumbs up" to see if I was ready to go; he was telling me that we were only supposed to sing one verse.

The moral of the story is plain: Ansgar speaks excellent English, but he's got to get rid of that German accent when he's using hand signals.