rub off on

May 5のThe Japan Times Onlineに "English fluency and alligator pits" と題された記事があり、英語の流暢さと "alligator pits" にどんな関係があるのだろうと気になり記事を読みました。
記事は日本の大学で英語を教えていたというAMY CHAVEZさんで、英語を学んだ学生がこんな苦情を吐いていると書いています。
You promised me a bright future if I learned English! You said learning English would help my employability and that I'd gain an international perspective! You and your haughty institution lured me to your school with glossy brochures showing Japanese students sharing conversations with beautiful blue-eyed foreigners, suggesting that their beauty and worldliness would rub off on me, or that at least I'd get a date with one of them.
そして、記事の中に "alligator" が使われている文が次ぎの様に三箇所ありました。
*The fact that they are bilingual, and learned both languages as native languages, allows them to sail across the cultural alligator pit.
*They understand that the cultural is just as important as the language when it comes to jumping over alligator pits.
*Going a step further, we should also be grooming students in English ethics, economics, immigration, and of course, alligator wrestling.
どうも "alligator pits/wrestling" は現実の世界を比喩的に表しているようです。
この記事で覚えたいと思った表現は最初に引用した文中の "rub off on" です。　辞書で意味を確認します。
・Wiktionary: (idiomatic) To adapt to a way of behaving after constant exposure to it: The hippie way of life seems to have rubbed off on him, as he's a flower power aficionado
・Dictionary.com: to become transferred or communicated to by example or association: Some of his good luck must have rubbed off on me.
・American Heritage Dictionary: Become transferred to another, influence through close contact, as in We hoped some of their good manners would rub off on our children . This idiom alludes to transferring something like paint to another substance by rubbing against it.
こすって塗り付けるイメージを思い浮かべればこのイデオムは覚えられそうです。　
この記事を読みたい方は次ぎの場所にあります。　
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120505cz.html
では、
See you later, alligator.