Viva Veritas!

The graphic seen on all Exit signs here in Italy is of a little green guy running like hell for his very life, but let’s tell they truth here: when it comes to actual languages, some are a lot prettier than others:

Here’s the English on the plastic bag the typical hotel provides for your dirty laundry: “Linen to be washed and ironed,” it says. Then there's the French phrase for the same thing: “Linge à laver ou à repasser,” It's OK but it's nothing great, right? And forget the message in German: “Schmutz-oder bügelwäsche. ””Schmuz? Oder?” I mean how unpretty is that?

But in Italian? In Italian the message is just plain sublime. Dirty clothes or not you just can’t argue with “Biancheria da lavare o stirare.”It makes you want to break into song, am I wrong? And it almost- ALMOST - makes you forget how very frank and practical Europeans really are, because not only do the Exit signs tell it like it is and even though I myself just used it to wash my socks in, this little dandy gizmo which we have seen in four of our last four hotels really IS what Mick Dundee called it in that cute first movie that bears his name!

Long as They Don't Do it in the Street & Frighten the Horses

Today Uncle Ed and I went to our favorite place, the little pond where we both like to watch the ducks dip their heads in the water and show everyone their underpants.  We had just been to his dentist which took forever and made him grumpy (“Who gets fillings at 88”?) and I was fretting generally. I had dashed into the supermarket for some hot barbecue for him and I of course had my sad little soggy salad from the last night's dinner which looked like somebody’s stomach,  not the nice fat part you can rest your soft drinks on but the organ. (This is what Old Dave does with all leftovers: he shovels them into plastic bags. The man is great with clean-up but I do shudder to see those plastic bags, which really do resemble an array of body parts there in the fridge which sometimes look like they’re pulsing.) Now now here we were there at the pond, Ed all grumpy, me all anxious and blue, my secret favorite Bad Day Combo.

On a whim I asked him if he minded my leaving him here to look at the water while I took a very quick walk to clear my head, and on that walk which lasted all of 18 minutes I saw a sight: A couple on a bench wrapped in a Hollywood-style embrace, lips locked.  HE was ardent; kissed that girl for longer than it takes to asphyxiate someone, and with that whole head-moving-around thing thrown in. SHE was tentatively accepting, if practically bent over backwards by the force of his enthusiasm. After one mad tonsil-assaulting smooch he suddenly stopped, stood up in front of her seated self, knelt down as if to propose, then stood again quick, made his whole body as rigid as a plank and lowered himself like a man doing a push-up to land on her…. chest sort of while the whole time still kissing her and kissing her.

I had only walked past three times in the last 90 seconds while pretending not to look but I bet she felt me. I bet she felt us all, the joggers and the cyclists and the wheezy old guys with cigars.  “Watch it there pal” is what we were saying but we needn’t have worried: Out of the blue the girl suddenly brought her foot down BANG! on the pavement once, twice, three times to get her man’s attention pushed him away and in two seconds excessive adoration was put in its place: they were sitting up nice side by side and once again thanks to Womankind civilization was saved. SAVED I tell you!    

Beware the Old Bait-and Switch

Hmmmmm….so my grandaddy here always used to say you should never say anything in any forum that you wouldn’t want read aloud in the public square. I know I sure believed him. He knew a lot, that child of Irish immigrants born in Famine-time. He came into the world in the 1870s, raised himself up from poverty and went on to become a lawyer, a judge and the recipient of an Honorary Degree from Harvard.

He was also fun and he gave us kids Hershey Bars. My sister Nan and I got to live with him for all of our first decade on the planet. I actually imprinted on him and not just because we looked alike with our black curly hair. We also act alike, I see now that I'm grown: He was always giving uplifting talks for no money at all, at places like the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Chelsea. I also give talks for no money at all. In fact every good thing I do I do for no money because come on, did Jesus charge admission to the Sermon on the Mount? No he did not. 

Mostly though, I know I'm like my grandfather because even on my blog, supposedly a much freer forum than a column I still can’t use bad language or say anything I wouldn’t say in front of a Fourth Grade class. I mean pop culture is tacky enough adn I'm freshly nauseated every time I come across the double-entendres in CBS’s Prime time Two-and-a Half Men for example; sickened by the way they have that child repeating phrases which in the storyline he is purported  not to know the meaning of - all so the audience can have that nice in-group feeling of actually getting the  - wink-wink, nudge-nudge naughty - references. It's one thing if you’re a tired 40-year-old watching the show but you know very well it’s also millions and millions of Second Graders seeing it, and God that makes me mad. If there’s anything more shameful than using a child to sneak your dirty joke under the wire I don’t know what it is.  

So….are there any young’uns out there today? You kids on Facebook maybe? If so hear me now and you males especially: If you ever entertained the hope that associating with a woman was going to be like pulling into some big service station in the sky, well I've got news for you: That hope is all based on the ol' Bait-and-Switch and it's brought to you by people who are trying to sell you stuff: Sneakers and blue jeans. Music and push-up bras. It isn’t real in other words and sure I know there’s that whole pathetic world to whom it may SEEM real – pornography is a growth industry they say - but those are loser-men in the grip of an addiction and do you know what an addiction is? Look at the private life of Bill Clinton over the last 20 years and you tell ME if you think that’s a pretty picture.

Anyway all those images of panting women? they’re fake, kids; the women are acting. In the real world you’re going to be dealing with REAL women and let me tell you on the basis of l-o-o-n-g experience: whether they’re 12 or 112, women are interested in three things in their dealings with others: straight talk, mutuality, and respect. Whether they’re 12 or 112, women – and all the good men – and, praise God, a great many young people too - know that we’re all here to do three things: pick up after ourselves, live in a peaceful manner and bring along the little ones to do the same.

- and now here he is again, papa to my mother and to four other little ones too. coming home from work and happy to be home, in the quiet summer of 1905.