I smiled politely. It was a chilly October evening in the Ozark Mountains, and I was taken by my host's concern for the wellbeing of his rabbit, presumably shivering somewhere in a drafty hutch. I thought that buying a scarf for his pet bunny was perhaps a little odd, but this was America, a strange new land.

The year was 1981, the place Fayetteville, Arkansas, and I had stepped off a small Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to teach at the University of Arkansas School of Architecture as part of an exchange program with my university in Plymouth, England. This was my first real contact with America. The nation, the state of Arkansas, the town of Fayetteville, and the American university system were wholly unknown quantities. In the context of my massive ignorance, the curious case of the shivering bunny seemed only a trifling oddity.

I followed my host through the small terminal building to a darkened car park. He opened the boot of a small, blue Volkswagen and hoisted my suitcase inside. "The door's unlocked," he said. "It's only a short drive." We bumped into each other at the left hand door. "No," said the professor, politely. "You sit the other side. This is America."

Approaching the town of Fayetteville, the professor paused at a traffic light, then turned sharply into the forecourt of a brightly lit petrol station. Pulling to one side, he stopped the car and leapt out. "Stay there. I won't be a moment. I'll just get the muffler."

I craned my neck, searching unsuccessfully for anything that looked like a pet shop. Perhaps it's round the back, I thought. It seemed a little odd for a shop selling animals to be in the same building as a petrol station, but I was determined to take this new place at face value, and not judge it by the standards and expectations of my English home.

The professor returned round the corner of the building carrying a long cardboard box, opened the boot, and placed the box beside my suitcase. It made a hollow clunking noise. "Damn mufflers," he grumbled. "They get more expensive every time."

I wondered what kind of scarf could be in that box. Trying to make sense of the situation, I speculated that the muffler might be wound round something heavier, as packing for another purchased item. "Was there much choice?" I asked, anxious to keep up my end of the conversation. My host looked at me, one eyebrow raised quizzically. "Choice?" he said. "One damn muffler's the same as all the others. So long as it fits the rabbit, who cares?"

"Oh," I said, remembering the size of the box. "Is it a big rabbit?"

Now the other eyebrow shot up. "Rabbits are all the same damn size here," said my host, with a wary glance in my direction. "Do they have different sizes in England?"

This conversation was getting stranger than I cared to admit. "Why, certainly," I replied. "They come in all sizes."

"Huh," said the professor, sliding behind the wheel and starting the engine. "They only import one size over here."

"Import rabbits?" I asked, a bit startled. "But what about quarantine?"

My new acquaintance stopped the car. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked. "This Rabbit came over from Germany in a crate. Why would you put the damn thing in quarantine? It's a machine."

"This is . . . a rabbit?" I asked, the light slowly dawning that the professor was referring to the Volkswagen itself. "But why does it need a muffler?"

""Cos the old one's broke," he sighed, exasperated by my dimwittedness. "Can't you hear the noise it's been making all evening?"

Images of a shivering bunny warmed by his nice new woolly scarf vanished from my mind. "Oh, I see!" I said, bursting out laughing. "You've just bought a silencer for your Golf. Seeing the professor's puzzlement, I explained. "Back home this Volkswagen is called a Golf. And a muffler is a silencer."

"Oh, brother," he said, shaking his head. "Teaching with you is going to be weird."

I pondered our semantic and cultural differences 23 years ago just as I do today. Despite the confusion over rabbits and golf, our two nations were once closely aligned in their worldviews. Then, the differences that existed tended to be humorous, but in the last four years they've plumbed the depths of tragedy. What do the next four portend?