The other night I was at the Coldplay concert and I was walking through a crowd and I realized: there is a term that many Americans seem to have forgotten. It’s a term that English people seem to overuse, or at least use in various forms.

Whenever you are on the subway – the tube in England – or in a crowded restaurant, and a British person bumps into you, they will immediately look at you and say, “sorry,” or “pardon me,” or “excuse me.” But Americans seem to have this incredible lack of knowledge about the term “excuse me” or the word “sorry.”