In the United States, people greet each other in literally thousands of ways.  I had been away on sabbatical from a university in the southern part of the Midwest.  When one of the shop technicians in my department saw me again after the year away he called out cheerfully, “Hey there, stranger!  Police know you’re out?” “What did he mean by that?” asked my German husband, Markus, worried.  “He meant ‘hi’,” I said.