It Starts With Someone

It starts with someone.

In France there’s a cultural norm to regard corn as food fit only for swine. Humans don’t eat it—or rather, the French don’t eat it. Other cultures around the world have a different standard for corn. The French however, maintain that corn belongs to the pigs. If you happen to visit France, and you have a love of corn, don’t expect to find it in any restaurants or markets.

How the French came to this view of the starchy vegetable called corn, I don’t know. My suspicion is that there was only one guy. In my imagination he’s an old, stodgy Frenchman named Greilleaux (pronounced “gree-o”). Greilleaux had an issue with opinions, and the issue was that he didn’t care for anyone else’s. His were most important to him, so he stuck with them. His opinion of corn was that it was not food. He never wanted to see it on his plate. He didn’t even want to smell it cooking. Because he was so stubborn with his opinion, other people came to follow his lead. “Corn is for swine,” became a chant, of sorts. People went out to restaurants and spurned anything with corn in it, on it, or near it. They, like Greilleaux, weren’t having any of it. The stubborn chant passed from village to village until it spanned the country.

Similar things have happened elsewhere around the world.

In India, there is a tradition of considering the cattle of the pasture as if they were ancestors. “I will not eat my mother cow,” said a lone woman from Mumbai named Aangrilu. Her voice was sweet and her rice dishes were sweeter, so people tended to listen to her. It wasn’t long before everyone in Mumbai refused to have a barbecue, refused to even think of beef jerky, and wouldn’t dare wear a leather jacket. For fear of angering Aangrilu, and for fear of being a social outcast, the Mumbaites let the wave of opinion flow over their culture. Like the cultural wave in France, the wave in India didn’t stop in one city, it washed across the entire country. It was a cultural norm which McDonald’s could never infiltrate. The cows were happier though.

In Japan, it took only one driver to show off with a drift, and now everyone does it. People don’t drive to the grocery store in Japan—they drift.

In America, there’s a cultural norm of carrying either a gun in their sock or a switchblade in their waistband. Why they don’t just use their pockets is a mystery.

In Hawaii, they hang a necklace of flowers called a lei, around everyone’s neck. Actually, that tradition didn’t take over any countries, so just like, uh, never mind that one.

In Mexico, it took only one smart mother to slap a hat with a wide brim on her son so he wouldn’t get sunburnt, and the cultural norm of the sombrero was born. Now it’s culturally uncool to go anywhere without a sombrero in Mexico. The only exception to the rule is if your sombrero was a nacho sombrero and it was eaten all gone, then you have a valid excuse. In fact, if you’re ever in Mexico and you see someone without a hat, it’s safe to ask them, “Oh, did yours get eaten too?” They’ll answer you with a hearty, “Dios me salve de esta locura.” It means they like you.

Nacho hats, of course, are made of corn. Needless to say, you’ll never find a nacho sombrero in France, but as you’ve seen from the examples above, every cultural shift starts with someone.