The Ancient Ones

This post doesn't really serve all that much of a narrative purpose, it's more just to confess something to all of you. Old Italian ladies scare me.

That's it. Go and ahead laugh, but I assure you, until you have a had a direct encounter with one don't be so quick to laugh it off. On the vast whole, they're all about 5 feet tall, wizened, and truly hate me. Yes its true. Every female over the age of 60 in all of Italy despises me and are determined to make my life difficult. They glare at me with tiny eyes glittering with... I don't know what to call it but it freaks me out. I've withheld judgment for several months, but over the past several months I've had many encounters that neither have my peers experienced nor my Italian friends been able to explain. The only answer: le donne vecchie don't like me and I should fear them. Let me regale you with a few tales...


The Metro (Part 1)

In the first month of school, I was getting used to taking the metro everywhere. That wasn't all that difficult, Milan has a fantastic public transportation system and I can get most of the places I need to go in about 30 min. The metro is speckled with the usual people, various musicians who trap you in the car with their old violin or accordion, gypsies who shout their (to me) unintelligible messages, and beggars with their signs and outstretched hands (a great source of moral trouble for me. I give what I can but the truth is that I just don't have that much money. Then their is the fact that some beggars here aren't working from necessity but rather work for the Family). Anyways, I had just really began to feel comfortable with my ability to negotiate a system filled with people who I couldn't communicate with. It was my first month here so I didn't really speak any Italian by that point. I mean I could have told them my name and how old I was...but not really anything too useful.

Now before I continue, you all should know that here in Italy age is a big deal. The elderly are generally very respected and on public transportation if there is an elderly person standing you're expected to offer them your seat. Totally cool, I think that's great. Well...

I was coming back from class one day and I climbed into a metro car that had literally nobody in it. So I just chose a seat back in the corner where I could see the vast expanse of no one in front of me. Unfortunately, my solitude only lasted until the next stop. The doors hissed open and in walked an imperious old lady in her ankle length fur coat (she was maybe 5'4") She looks over her sunglasses around at the empty car and then shuffles towards me. I ignore her until it is obvious that she is standing next to me staring down at me. Kind of awkward right? I glance warily up at her, and then she starts berating me in Italian. Not just a normal scolding either, a full-fledged-whiny-sounding-fast-as-hell-word-blurring tongue lashing. After about 2 minutes I realized what she was talking about. She was pissed off that I didn't offer her my seat.

What the hell?

This lady literally walked PAST 15 open seats to get to me. Easier to get into seats as well. You had to climb past other seats to get where I was. To put it lightly, I was more than irked. I'll happily give up my seat to an older person if there is a dearth of seating, but this was just abuse of the "I'm old" card. That day I was already a little irritated, so I just decided to try and ride it out. She couldn't keep it up forever, right? Wrong. She not only kept it up, but she was going ALL the way to my stop, nearly a 15 min ride. AND not a single other person got on the entire time. I couldn't have made that happen if I paid people to not get on at each stop. So I just sat there awkwardly and pissed off with an old Italian lady yelling at me. And so was my first encounter with....The Ancient Ones.


The Gelateria

Almost a month and a half later, I was showing Jenna and Brett around Milan and decided to show them what I (and my Italian professor) consider to be the best gelato in town, a small place called Grom. (Okay quick side note, in Milan there are only two schools of thought when it comes to opinions of where you can find the best gelato, Chocolat and Grom. Chocolat is apprently a more Milanese styled gelato, heavy and rich. Grom on the other hand makes a more light tasting gelato, though still delicious. It hails from down south in Firenze. Speaking of which, they had a new flavor the other day, Cassata Siciliana. It was a ricotta and candied orange peel combination. Blew my mind.) Anyways, I had been wearing a light jacket all day since it had been cool in the morning, but since we were in the dead heat of the afternoon I had pushed my sleeves up to try and cool off a bit. We wandered into Grom and stood in line for a minute while I translated the menu for Jenna and Brett and made some recommendations. Behind me I heard someone say "Ragazzo!" (Boy) I paid this no mind, you hear somebody yelling ragazzo at someone at least three thousand times a day. I continued trying to help Jenna and Brett decode the menu and then I heard another "RAGAZZO", meaner this time and it was accompanied with a tug at my sleeve. Puzzled I turned around only to find not just one, but TWO angry old Italian ladies. The sleevetugger began rapidly scolding me, and the entire time I'm sitting there wondering "What have I done wrong? Why does the entire population of elderly ladies in Italy hate me so?" Finally, I understood that they wanted me to roll down my sleeves. Why? Frankly I have no idea. I even double checked my arms to make sure I hadn't written "SHIT" or "DAMN" or "ASS" on my arms. (Not that this is something I usually do, but it would have made their request seem more reasonable. There weren't any naked ladies on my arms either.) So there was little else I could do but roll down my sleeves and be uncomfortably warm until we could get our gelati and get the hell away from the old ladies. I've run this story past my Italian teacher Paolo and he had no idea why my rolled up sleeves could offend anyone. What would they have done if I had been wearing a short sleeve shirt? I have no idea, it was just another encounter with .....the Ancient Ones.

Nor would I be so lucky that these would be my only such encounters with these beings. I am continually running into them, somehow inconveniencing them in some way and leaving awkwardly, my back pin cushioned with their daggers of ocular origin. Why? No one can say...no one that is....but The Ancient Ones.