Lost in Translation

You think you’ll be fine in a place like Italy - unless you fail to pick up that instructional phrasebook until two hours before you go there.  Still, I was sure I could read all the road signs, just by recalling a couple of super-old French lessons and intuiting the rest. For example I saw many that said “Sit Down and Shut Up” - if the ‘ferm-’ root In Italian means to ‘close’ or to ‘shut’ as it does in French.  Saw a picture of smiling young men on a billboard advertising inseminations – at least I thought that’s what they were advertising if my method was working on the words ‘insieme’ and ‘studiando.I was on top of it all; ready at every minute to yell “Ho Vomitato!” which is funny all by itself and basically means, “I pray you, kind hospital sir, I have felt the nauseation for all the day.”Luckily on this trip with my old school chums we have had many kind angels helping us figure out what what we are trying to say. The last one was so excited to learn I was from near Boston and told of his colleague's new establishment about to open up there. "Pizza Beach" he said it was to be called and wrote a hand-written note for me to give to the main guy the first time I go there.So here's to Pizza Beach then, with a name no funnier than the one chosen by an equally enterprising  person new to our shores reading "Chinese Take-out. Nice Eat You?"