Glass Doors and Lunch Breaks

Shauna Gumm

12/10/06

B4

Glass Doors and Lunch Breaks

You could say my father’s money saving strategies are a little “over the top.” Other than collect every recorded episode of “Wife Swap” and “Survivor,” he never throws anything away (including a can of 1972 sardines). He is one of those men who will spend thousands of dollars on an entertainment system for the living room, but will begin to sweat when he must pay five cents more for something he paid a dollar for last week. He drives the extra five miles to get gas that is three cents cheaper and always keeps a watchful eye for things being thrown away that should still be in the pantry (according to him). The Gumm family has learned the secrets of discretely disposing the four year sunflower yellow expired mayo and pretending all that medicine from 1992 went to a good use. I can blame his ridiculous attitude about never wasting anything on his being raised in the projects of Detroit, but still I can’t understand his hypocritical view on money. My mother tells him constantly, “Ken it’s okay, you don’t have to eat all your food, we can afford to throw away the last scoop of potatoes.” (As well as he could afford not to eat them).

I’m not advocating that I thoughtlessly throw away food the starving children of Ethiopia would have eaten; I’m just looking out for the better health of myself as well as the better aroma of my kitchen. The first step in that process is not spreading clumpy three year old peanut butter on a wooly forest green slice of wheat bread. Our kitchen is only a reflection of my father’s outlook on money, but the real story begins on our way to Italy.

I told myself I wouldn’t become another one of those stupid American tourists, taking pictures of the food and getting lost on the way to the city market. I assured myself on the plane ride that we would get around in Italy with ease; nobody would have to know we were Americans because I had already planed to pretend I was Canadian (however Canadians act I’m not sure). And when it came to streets and such I figured I could read signs and get around, I mean Italian can’t be that much different from Spanish right? We had picked up a book of “easy and useful Italian phrases” in the airport, and reading them on the plane I became weary of the things this book was suggesting our Italian vacation might consist of. We memorized some “useful” phrases such as “I think she was hit by a bus!” and “Is your husband with you tonight?” Italy was looking even more enticing now, as this travel guide suggested someone might be hit by a bus or have an encounter with a seditious Italian house wife, someone named Nona looking for a one night fling away from Mario and their twelve children. Honestly I can’t say our vacation was quite this delicious, but we did face obstacles and their root was money.

I was disappointed to soon found out was that we weren’t as cultured as we figured we were. So what if my great grandmother was born in Florence, and I knew that white wine goes with seafood; I still had no idea what the hell an “intervallo del pranzo” was.

Our first challenge took place in the restricted, unpaved streets of Milan where our American identities first made their appearance. After eight salaciously solid hours of driving within a ten mile radius my father gave into our pleads to simply ask someone for directions. Truly I don’t know what we were thinking, this wasn’t the 7-Eleven on Broadway; it was a mechanics garage in a completely foreign country. Where as streets move in a logical direction in the area of Denver, the streets of Milan would continue for a block and change into another name. Francisco Street would become Piza Street at the next light and then would turn from Piza Street into Fettuccini Street and Linguini Street before we had even started to move again. As much as I didn’t want to expose my level of Americanism to the whole country, we decided to stop at this place and ask for directions. In a voice that resembled much too closely to Tony Soprano the mechanic greeted us with a friendly (I’m assuming), “Dove lei tenta di andare?” He quickly assumed we had no idea what he was saying and waved his hand as he pulled in front of our car on his motorbike.

Unfortunately, not all of our encounters in Italy would lead us in the right direction, as we would be picked out as the Americans (possibly because of my dad’s high white socks). However, the one thing that directed us towards the general stereotype was the slew of American money my father had with him. This obvious issue was the consequence of his not wanting to use the extra fifty cents to get the correct currency, something he would later regret. In desperate need of cash we did what any good American does in need of money; we went to the ATM. The Italian ATM and of course none of us could grasp all its Italian complexities and so after fifteen minutes of swearing and frustration we thought it a good idea to walk across the bank – to the bank of Italy. It was about three in the afternoon in Milan as we approached the paper that read “siamo su intervallo del pranzo” (we are on lunch break). Great, awesome, etc. etc. the bankers are on lunch break at three in the afternoon. We returned later, exhausted and tired of walking miles, because after all walking is free.

My conclusion from the following experience is that The Bank of Italy must hold some pretty important documents, maybe the Da Vinci Code (or something like it), as it is protected by a star trek like entrance. The glass doors to the bank resembled somewhat like the glass doors you walk through to enter the Hyatt. Yet, this revolving door was equipped with American detection equipment, that is the ability to stop suddenly at the sense of my father. While my mother and I slid through the door with ease my father struggled with this task for a mere twenty minutes. As he stepped into the door, it would revolve half way around and lock him in repeating the phrase, “Per favore di togliere la sua macchina fotografica e collocarlo nell'angolin” With each step his dazed face began to show even more as his eyebrows caved in, greeting his nose as if to say “yeah what now?” The chuckling Italian bank guards stood in the corner as my dad stepped back and forth in the glass container ignoring the foreign words repeating in a woman’s mechanical voice. I’m not sure what an Italian chuckle sounds like in a glass jar, but without it was a low-pitched vibration, if written probably appearing something like the following “eeéeeéeeáaaaáaúaúuúaúeoooaahahah. Eventually a man walked by and told my father to just simply remove his camera, because it was of course just that “simple.”

Once inside we were instructed to take a number and wait, wait for almost two hours, in a line as tedious as the Denver metro DMV. As soon as the well dressed woman was helped in front of us the bank decided to close, and as we walked out into the now drizzly weather of Italy I felt more like a stranger to this world than I ever have before. We decided to try again tomorrow, and I accepted the fact that there was no way to hide it, no matter how much broken Italian I could manage or how much pasta I had eaten; I would always be an American. While I’ve always wished I could say I came from the same country my great-grandmother grew up, that I could make canollies from scratch or that I had seen all of Michelangelo’s works, I admitted it would never happen. I live in America, where McDonald's was founded, and our culture is reflected in prime time television. Blaming our stupidity on my fathers lame money habits would just make me another stupid American, and though tough I now realize I have no control over where I was born, but can control how my culture is viewed and I don’t want to be the American stuck in the glass door.