Stares

Don’t dance up stairs because you will fall. Especially don’t dance to yourself on the subway, skip past tired Italians heading for the escalators, and decide to take the stairs instead, because you will fall. And you won’t just fall, you will make a fairly impressive skip up and down a step and then trip your toe on said step and hurtle toward the ground, moved even faster by the momentum required for such a stunt. You will then be left with a stinging left palm and a right hand covered in who knows what. So don’t do this. Unless you don’t mind, of which I learned recently that I don’t.

Italians love to stare at each other all day and all night. On the metro, in a trattoria, at bus stops. They never stop ogling everyone around them. And they don’t just stare, they judge. They judged me when I mouthed the words to the song in my head. They judged me when I skipped past them, offending them by my inexhaustible energy. And they got great satisfaction when I finally met my end at the top of the stairs.

Interestingly though, I didn’t mind. I have just spent the last week thinking about Italy and Italians, and you know what? I don’t care! It used to bother me, I’d be stared into standing bored in the metro, waiting for my stop like the rest. There are rules to behavior, and if you break one, you offend everyone around you. For example, one of my teachers talked about her Italian boyfriend (she happens to be American) and how he came home one night deeply offended by a student of his. This student approached him after class one day to discuss something, asking for an extension on a paper or whatever, and he was wearing a hat. A hat! Indoors! Now I know it’s good manners to remove headwear when inside, my school banned hats on heads in classrooms, but to be offended by it? She emphasized that he didn’t just think this kid was ignorant of manners, but that he was personally offended by his headwear. So I think I’m safe in assuming that those penetrating glares directed at me are intended to be penetrating glares.

But today I did not give them that victory over me. Yes, I fell, and yes, I noticed very satisfied grins directed at my pain, but I was smiling too. Looking around me I noticed smiles quickly revert back to disapproving frowns once they saw my grin. I got up without a second down and continued dancing, skipping all the way to the second flight and out the door.