Monday, August 22

Life's a Beach


Spending the week in the verdant rolling hills of the Maremma with my American relatives is always a nice opportunity for more cross-cultural comparisons in conversations.  The younger the kids, the more astute the observations (but only because the older ones have their noses plugged directly into usb ports of one contraption or another rather than see the sights...).
This week it was the beach observations that particularly tickled my fancy:


  • Why is it that the older the man and the rotunder the paunch the greater the predilection for white speedo bathing suits?
  • If you want to go the beach, head out around 12pm when everyone leaves for the lunch hour.
  • If you take out a pedal boat, you sometimes have to come into shore so the guy can leave in time to enjoy his pranzo & siesta.
  • Are we going to get in trouble for having too many people on our pedal boat?  [This refers to the “security-punchy & lawsuit-proof Americans” sending the Sheriff out after us on a Michigan lake for supposedly swimming off our boats – we were all completely dry but the asshole still forced us to go back and turn in the boats as we had supposedly ‘risked our lives’ for eating pringles and looking too fondly at the lake bottom—and we were all wearing life jackets]  Answer:  No.  Italy, unlike the USA, still allows people to actually enjoy the sports they set out to enjoy in the first place.  Thus you can actually ride a horse when sitting upon one, swim in an ocean after renting a boat entirely designed for that purpose, paraglide and so on, without also first signing away your first born child.
  • The lifeguard spent the entire time giving CPR to a young hottie perched up in his little covered love shack – Shouldn’t he get fired for that?