American pop culture apparently redounds throughout the world. And just when I begin to feel sorry for some non-Americans, as they seem to struggle with American English, I get a surprise.

In our travels across the Atlantic, we’ve observed how remarkably similar things really are. At a McDonalds restaurant in Basel, Switzerland, we sat near crowds of teens swallowing Big Macs while texting and listening to popular American music. The only difference seemed to be that the default additive to a Swiss order of fries is mayo instead of catsup.

We had a brief conversation with the Swiss youngsters, whose answers were tinged with accents we’re not accustomed to. They answered clearly, even if the natives injected “like” and “ya know” into several sentences the way we Americans do.

These mannerisms convinced us that American pop culture must be everywhere. All of these experiences came to mind this weekend as we hosted a foreign exchange student, Rama Safitri, from Indonesia, who joined our European exchange students and our granddaughters for fun and games.

There’s a fast-moving parlor game called “Charades,” loaded on to a laptop computer. It involves guessing the name of a movie, book, TV show or just about anything else.

It’s simple: The “it” player holds the laptop in a position that everybody else can see it. Let’s say the topic is movies and the particular film is “Gone With the Wind.” Participants see the words and immediately turn into mini-windmills. The “it” player’s job is to guess the name of the movie based on non-verbal clues the others give.

Of course there’s a time limit, and those providing clues are not allowed to use any of the words that appeared on the laptop screen.

Five minutes into the games convinced me that the youngsters are much more attuned to popular culture — films, TV shows, books, superstars, etc. — than any of us oldsters, whose familiarity with pop knowledge ended when Hoss, Adam and Little Joe qualified for Social Security, then galloped away from the Ponderosa.

It’s challenging to describe the animation we observed; each of the mid-teen girls laughing, giggling, becoming emotional and even yelling, trying frantically to deliver the right clue.

Well, my wife and I enjoyed the action (yes, we played a few rounds, but that didn’t help our cause much) and soon we opted to remain spectators. And yet, watching these youngsters blurt out clues impressed us. It’s as if they’ve spent hours in their home countries absorbing American pop culture.

• • •

Readers of this column certainly are aware of my many snipes at how people use the language. But how about my own family? You see, Dad prided himself on being precise, especially in his use of Spanish. He criticized Mom (but not too often or too harshly) over how she took liberties with Spanish.

My sister, Dorothy Maestas, and I were adults before he discovered that one common word in Mom’s lexicon was “chayote.” Dictionaries aside, Mom created her own language. “Chayote,” in Mom’s parlance was simply “sloppy.” Thus, when I went to grade school, with my shirt half tucked, half hanging out, Mom would bestow on me the title of the World’s Biggest Chayote. Later, my sister and I discovered “chayote” is the name of a funny, squatty squash that looks like, well, a school kid with a sloppy shirt.

I’ve heard only two other people — Jay Martinez and Linda Lopez — use “chayote” to describe a sloppy person. Both Martinez and Lopez grew up in Wagon Mound. Hmm. I wonder if there’s a connection.

• • •

I was so old when I decided to tie the knot that my fiancé and I pondered not having children and starting with grandchildren instead.

That’s a slight exaggeration. Our two older sons have five children between them, and our youngest son, Ben, well, that’s a different story. But not for long.

At Christmas time Ben and his wife, Heather, asked us to join them for a few moments to open a gift they had for us. And they wanted the uncles, aunts and cousins there too.

We opened the gift and found a mug with some very detailed, high-quality images. It showed Ellen and June, daughters of our oldest son, and Arthur, Carly and Celina, progeny of our middle son.

Although married for 10 years, Ben and Heather are childless, but we hope not for long. The mug with those full-color images also has a greyish image that looks like a curled up, sleeping cat.

We stared. We turned the cup sideways until one of us realized the mystery image on that mug was a sonogram, an image of the baby in its very early states. We could see what’s to become our granddaughter (or grandson). The parents to-be didn’t ask their obstetrician about the gender of the fetus, nor do they wish to know. I agree.

My mother, the late Marie Trujillo, always seemed happiest with children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren around. Among members of the larger Trujillo clan, several offspring waited years before starting a family.

And Mom, the aforementioned matriarch who had a way with words, christened some latecomers with terms like “huevon,” which in my late mother’s parlance, meant “lazy.” Lazy? Well, Mom, my sons simply didn’t want to rush things.

To Mom, any person in her clan who waited too long to become a parent apparently wasn’t working hard enough.

• • •

Ground beef, in my view, is far preferable to ground pork or ground hog. So why did people make such a big deal of Ground Hog Day yesterday?

• • •

This election year, there’s a new dance, called, appropriately, The Politician. It’s easy: Take one step forward, three steps backward and then . . . sidestep.