A couple of hours later we pull our over-tired kids away
even as they cry bloody murder that they are entitled to five more
minutes. We finally get our kids in our
cars, they instantly crash, drive home, piggy-back rides up to bed, pretty
typical scene.
Back in the kitchen recuperating in the quiet, a few things
dawn on me. First, the past 2.5 hours of
socializing was done in 100% Italian language, for the kids and the adults. There were 0 other Americans present and most
of the Italians spoke little to no English.
There was no hesitation or trepidation from anyone in our family to
attend an event like this, knowing it would be all in Italian, which is pretty
cool by itself. It is still pretty
exhausting to have to concentrate for that long, especially at the end of an
already long week, and doubly especially with so much noise and distraction at
the party. {I lag behind everyone else
in the family with Italian language skills and I am far from fluent.}
The second thing that dawned on me is that for the past 2.5
hours of conversation between 7 or 8 first grade fathers who don’t know each
other very well, there was not one minute spent talking about work. As a matter of fact, besides their curiosity
of me and my role on “the American base” (which always generates a lot of
curiosity among the locals), no one asked anyone so much as what they did for a
living. It never came up…in 2.5 hours of
random conversation…ever. I couldn’t
tell you what most of them do for work and not because of a lack of
comprehension. I think one guy worked
with the mechanical parts that are used in drilling equipment. The only reason there was any reference to
that is because Italians (most foreigners we’ve met) love to tell you about
their travels to the U.S. This guy had
been to several places in the U.S. like Kansas and Texas and Louisiana – not
exactly top 3 U.S. tourist destinations – which generated the question of why
he went there. His trips to the U.S.
were work-related and I finally figured out the part about the drilling
equipment.
There was never any declaration of “no shop talk” either.
It’s not as if someone said, “Please guys, let’s not talk about work
tonight.” Nope. It wasn’t even as if there was an unspoken understanding
that this wasn’t the place to discuss work.
Really, it was more as if it never even occurred to them to talk about work. It wasn’t on their radar. Imagine that.
That would NEVER happen in the U.S.
There is no way 8 random dads get together for 2.5 hours of conversation
without someone asking someone else “So what do you do?”
What did we talk about?
We talked about our kids, the school, the curriculum, the economy, and
the weather. We talked about the
differences between Italian dialects and American accents. We talked a lot about activities in the
mountains nearby. One guy in particular
is an expert “powder skier” who spends most weekends in the winter exploring
some “off piste” slopes, and was full of interesting information. He showed us the “avalanche app” he had on
his phone that provided up-to-date, detailed information on all of the
avalanche conditions in the Dolomites. I
never knew so much about avalanches as I learned that night. We talked a lot about favorite vacation
spots, good food combinations, wine (which everyone here seems to know a lot
about), and extended families (who all seemed to live nearby).
When I mentioned this observation to our good friend Eros,
he looked at me blankly and couldn’t understand why I thought that was
interesting. Eros is a retired
electrician, who spent a lot of time in the past playing soccer and hiking the
Dolomites, and who is among lots of other things a regional expert in
mushrooms. He’s been married for over 40
years, spends a lot of time with his granddaughter, and keeps busy with his
“honey-do” list from his wife. His explanation
was simple: for most Italians, work is something that goes on in the background
to pay the bills. It is just not such a
central aspect of most people’s lives.
Why would it be? We only have one
life, he explains, why spend it so focused on work and money when there are so
many other things to be passionate about?
That’s a generalization and I know it’s not true for all
Italians. Everyone falls on a
spectrum. But where most Italians fall
on that spectrum is pretty far from where most Americans fall on that spectrum,
for good or bad, and it was never so evident to me as our time at the “First Grade Pizza Night”.
ct
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