While in the Soviet Union, my parents were constantly fed stories about what life was like in the evil, capitalist, and imperial west. A big focus was crime: everyone had a gun, murders were a regular occurrence, there was rampant crime, and so on.
When my parents arrived in Phoenix, they walked into their first apartment and saw, for the first time, a sliding, glass door which opened to a small balcony. “What is this?” my dad asked their sponsor. “It’s a glass door?” came the reply. At this point my parents were on to the trend that most Soviet stories were outright lies and decided that if Americans were using huge sheets of fragile glass in place of solid wood or metal doors, there must be no crime at all!
The next day they were driven to an event at the synagogue. Upon parking, my parents exclaimed that since America was so safe, there was no need to lock the car!
“No,” replied the puzzled driver, “we’re going to lock the car…”