I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

  • CapeWearingAeroplane
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    1 year ago

    Apparently there have been issues when US and British forces have worked together before du to the “I thought you were exaggerating” mindset.

    The brits have a tendency to downplay really bad situations to the point where, “It’s actually quite chilly” means “We’re in deep shit”. I read somewhere that this caused serious miscommunications several times, because Americans didn’t understand that brits were downplaying things, while brits though the Americans were always exaggerating.