The Efficiency of Europeans

Have you noticed how efficient Europeans are? In the cars that they manufacture and drive, in the way they make plans, in their mothering skills? I have this English friend who is a jet-setting world traveler and is the most efficient plan-maker I've ever met. She orchestrates grand American holidays based on who from the States e-mails her back first in terms of who's available to pick her up from the airport, who can put her up the most days, where would she have the most fun on her birthday, New Year's Eve, etc. And once she's in town, she maps out the visit's shopping sprees, meals out, and nights hitting the town in a staggering matter of minutes. I love that quality in a person.

I've just spent the morning with another European woman who has amazingly efficient skills...in this case, as a mother. She's from Hungary, her husband's German and their son goes to my kids' Spanish-speaking pre-school. I mean, right off, you get the idea that this woman doesn't waste time: Her son is three and he's learning to speak 4 (don't forget English) languages. Grace, Johnny and I met her and her two sons at a local kid hot-spot today for a sweaty morning of bike-riding.

A few minutes into our bike ride, Grace has to pee. Can't she just squat in the bushes? A few minutes later, Grace and Johnny are thirsty. Luckily, she has sips of water for all. When Grace's legs get tired of walking while the boys are up ahead on their bike? No problem: she's offered a free ride on the back of the baby's stroller. When Johnny's training wheels start to go haywire? She instantly discovers that it's because an anchoring bolt is missing, but we could ply it back into place. And the kicker: when Johnny's bike chain comes almost all the way loose in two places, and after I try unsuccessfully (while getting both hands dirty greasy) to put the chain back into place and declare, "I'm sorry, Johnny. I think I'm going to have to push your bike back to the car and we're going to have to take it home for Daddy to fix," this ultra capable, efficient twenty-four year old European woman, takes the bike, turns it upside down, fiddles here, fiddles there, gets the bike chains back on, hands me a baby wipe then hands me a different kind of baby wipe and says, "No, use this one. It got all the grease off."