I am taking a break from helping clean up around here for this thing tomorrow, that I will tell you about later. This morning I swept and washed down the courtyard. Let me tell you: lizard tails are hard to sweep up. They just sort of roll around and don’t want to get into the dustpan.
Anyway, I’m realizing that it’s interesting to see a country this way–to stay in a tiny town with a relative who’s lived here so long she’s practically a native. You get to know a place in a different way than if you travel around Seeing The Sights. (Which I’ve done in Italy before, though I’ve in no way seen everything!) This trip has been about visiting, not about touristing.
So I am noticing something called “The Way It’s Done in Italy.”
Monday, we went swimming at a swimming center–I’m not really sure what to call it. Not a public pool exactly; not a private health club; you go in and pay your six euros and then you swim. There’s women’s and men’s locker rooms, two indoor pools and an outdoor pool (that was closed, alas), a warmer pool for physical therapy, and that’s about it. Oh and lifeguards, or supervisors, or whatever, one of whom halted me and officiously explained that the lane I had chosen was available for open swimming, and that I could swim in it. Okay, thanks. The “Libre” sign pretty much did that for me, but I was happy for the clarification! 🙂
Anyway. After Auntie and I swam our fill (and oh god that felt good and I wish we’d been able to do it again this week), we went to change in the women’s locker room–and there was a woman in there with about a nine-year-old boy, getting him changed for his swim. “He’s too old to be in here,” Auntie whispered to me in English. I shrugged, pondered, and changed anyway. So did Auntie. The boy watched us, wide-eyed, till his mamma hustled him off to the pool.
On our way out, Auntie went to speak to the manager in outrage. Nearly-pubescent boys in the women’s locker room! The manager (a woman) argued back a while, then finally told Auntie there was nothing she could do about it. “That’s the way it’s done in Italy.” After further conversation, they parted very friendly, the manager apologetic and sympathetic.
Later over aperitivos with the neighbor (a sixty-year-old man), Auntie related the story. He shrugged and said, “That’s the way it’s done in Italy.” She asked him, What if a man wanted to take his nine-year-old daughter into his locker room, to stare at naked men? The neighbor couldn’t conceive of such a thing; he sort of giggled and shrugged. No man would take such an active role in parenting. That’s the mamma’s job. That’s how it’s done in Italy.
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The other day, the internet went down here at Chez Auntie. She turned the wireless router off and on, then the modem itself, and we rebooted our computers. To no avail. So she called the phone company (her internet provider). The man who answered (and he answered at once) told her to turn the wireless router off and on, and then the modem, and then any computers. She told him she’d done so, but went ahead and did it again; nothing.
Then he told her that there was no problem on his end, and that probably her router was broken, and she should ask her husband to fix it when he got home. She told him there is no husband. “Well, your son, or some other man.”
“There are no men here.”
Whereupon the phone company guy hung up on her. But then he called back a minute later and started asking more questions, and actually trying to help. Then the internet started working all by itself.
The phone company guy called back a third time, very friendly. He lives just down the road in Cremona; he’d looked at Auntie’s website and loved her art, and wants to come by with his girlfriend sometime to check it out.
That’s the way it’s done in Italy: first, insist that everyone understand and follow the expected social rules and mores; then become outraged when they don’t; then, establish a personal connection and become warm and friendly.
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I keep seeing this pattern. Yesterday a very stern and forbidding man with a clipboard and a badge came by from the water company, to lecture Auntie on having greatly exceeded her water quota. They argued a while; then, slowly, he began investigating the situation. It appears that either the meter is on the fritz, or she has a leak somewhere. Then the guy became very helpful and told her how to get this addressed with the water company so that she doesn’t get a bill for six billion euros.
I don’t imagine I would have seen any of this part of the culture if I were staying in hotels and seeing the sights. It’s fascinating.
Well, back to cleaning. Those lizard tails won’t pick themselves up. 🙂