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.

    • @[email protected]English
      7•1 year ago

      In the American style, also called the zig-zag method or fork switching, the knife is initially held in the right hand and the fork in the left. Holding food in place with the fork tines-down, a single bite-sized piece is cut with the knife. The knife is then set down on the plate, the fork transferred from the left hand to the right hand, and the food is brought to the mouth for consumption. The fork is then transferred back to the left hand and the knife is picked up with the right

      Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this since it’s cultural, but I feel like if it is possible to use cutlery wrong, then I think the American style is definitely one of the wrong ways.

      • @[email protected]
        2•1 year ago

        No one does that. In America we eat the burger or pizza with our hands, like GOD intended. Fries too.

        Every American dish can be eaten with your hands: burritos, sandwiches, pitas, hot dogs, fried chicken, BBQ, etc. What do you eat with? A fork, like some Euro pansy?

    • @davrod
      4•1 year ago

      I had no idea that I’d adopted the European method because fuck all that transferring back and forth.

    • @[email protected]
      2•1 year ago

      in the American style the fork is held much like a spoon, a pen or much like an excavator

      Shots fucking fired.