Last June I was in a small pharmacy in the heart of Rome, trying to figure out which face moisturizer had the highest SPF rating, when a woman in yoga pants, flip flops, and a cropped T-shirt rushed up to the counter and said, “Do y’all do COVID tests? ‘Cause I’m going on a cruise and I need a negative test or they won’t let me on the boat.”
As a writer always on the lookout for material, I quickly slid closer and pretended to be interested in the lip balm selection. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the man standing behind the counter, an older gentleman in a white smock. He squinted his eyes and said “non parlo inglese”. The woman repeated herself, only this time louder, as if volume was the barrier preventing the man’s comprehension. The scene dragged on uncomfortably until finally the woman threw up her arms and stormed out. The man looked at me and shrugged. I shrugged in return, and bought twenty euros worth of lip balm.
Temperature Rising in Rome
When I got back to the hotel, I told my wife Jess about the pharmacy incident. “I’m glad I’m not a typical American tourist,” I said. “They think everything should conform to them.” Jess raised one eyebrow, never a good sign, and reminded me of the tantrum I’d thrown upon checking in to the hotel when I discovered our room’s thermostat only displayed the temperature in Celsius.
“Who the hell is supposed to know what twenty degrees is?” I’d said while randomly pressing all of the thermostat’s buttons in an attempt to stop our room from feeling like a walk-in cooler. She then reminded me of how, in the weeks leading up to our trip, I’d begun an online Italian language class, only to abandon it when I realized I couldn’t become fluent in half an hour. She went on to mention that the previous day I’d become irritated at a men’s store while looking at a pair of linen pants and trying to decipher what a size fifty-two meant.
That evening Jess and I visited the Vatican, where we’d purchased tickets that included wine and antipasti at the small outdoor bistro in the Cortile della Pigna. As we sipped and snacked, a woman at the table next to us waved her hand wildly to summon one of the servers, then pointed at the tray of antipasti on her table. “I’m gluten free and lactose intolerant, so what on here can I eat?” she barked. The server had no clue what the woman was saying and quickly left, only to return a moment later with a colleague who spoke fluent English and answered all of the woman’s questions. When the colleague left, the woman sneered, then picked up a slice of prosciutto and let it dangle between her fingers for a long moment before dropping it back onto the tray. She then dug into her Vera Bradley duffle and pulled out a large bag of potato chips.
As I furtively spied on this woman, I felt Jess’s eyes burning into me. “I have a feeling I’m going to read about this,” she said. I thought back to my hotel thermostat meltdown, then nodded toward the woman, whose arm was now elbow deep in the potato chip bag. “Am I like that?” I asked. “Do I act spoiled and entitled?” Jess smiled sweetly. “Yes, and yes,” she said. “But you do a better than average job of keeping it to yourself.
