It was around 3pm, so naturally everywhere in the town you could possibly want to go was closed. I was in Vasto, Italy in the incomparable August humidity that draped everything in a heavy, unwelcome blanket, and found myself again walking through the empty town square. Then, in the middle of Piazza Rossetti, I heard a loud, tinny laugh. I turned around to see Giuseppe Buono, a middle-aged Italian man who, along with his wife, Michela, ran the ceramics studio our study abroad group collaborated with on a community project. Giuseppe was leaning against the side of the door to the studio—the door still had the “chiuso”—closed—sign tacked up and it was clear that he had only come out to talk to me.
“Ciao, Michelina, come va?” He greeted me and asked how “it” was going.
“Va bene, e Lei?” I answered, telling him “it” was going well.
“Perché cammini cosí tutto il tempo?” He asked.
I didn’t know what to say, in Italian or in English. Pause. Nervous laugh. Who asks that? What is that supposed to mean? I thought to myself, annoyed that he had come outside just to have this weird and pointless conversation.
“Che ne dice?” I asked what he meant, in response to his question: “Why do you always walk like that?”
“Cosí rapido. A dove vieni?”
Okay, now I really didn’t know what to say. He’d asked me why I walked so fast; where was I going? I was going back to our apartments. But that wasn’t what he meant. And it was kind of a low blow. I just stared back at him a little sheepishly, and he motioned for me to follow him into the studio.
We sat down at one of the three wooden workbenches in the small shop, where the walls were covered with ceramic fish and sailboats made by Giuseppe, Michela, and children from all around Vasto. A bright and cheery little room, if a bit stuffy. “Michelina, vorrei dirti qualcosa”—Michelle, let me tell you something—Giuseppe said. I braced myself.
“Your Italian is very good,” he told me, “It comes naturally to you, and if I didn’t know better, I would think you were a native based on how you speak.” (Cue warm and fuzzy feelings for the Romance Languages concentrator.) But Giuseppe had clearly mastered the two-part statement of breaking something harsh to someone: start with a compliment, and then follow up with what has to be said. So then came what had to be said, “But just from the way you walk, it’s so obvious that you’re American.”
Ouch. An even lower blow. I know I’m from New York, I know I go to Harvard, and I know that I’m a go-go-go type of person, admittedly the type of person who would be in a hurry on a hot August day in a deserted Italian piazza, even when there was nowhere to go and no reason not to take a leisurely stroll through the beautiful square and take in my surroundings. I knew I was that type of person, but I guess it had just never hit me that the type of person I was, was in such a strong contrast to the type of person I want to be, and the cultures I study and so desperately want to belong to. I was walking so fast, it’s true, but, for once, it wasn’t enough to get ahead.
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