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For example, a few weeks ago we spent the final fifteen minutes of class honoring Giuseppe Verdi’s two hundredth birthday. We discussed the great composer and his impact not just on Italy, but the music world in general. I love Verdi’s operas because he wasn’t afraid to go dark, like when (SPOILER ALERT) everyone dies in the pyramid at the end of
Aida
.

Donatella gave us the Italian lyrics to the aria we were listening to, along with the English translation, and we followed along. I left class that night really feeling as though I’d learned something significant. Then, because Joanna’s a fan, too, we had something entirely new to discuss over lunch.

In fact, I enjoy my class so much, I’ve taken to arriving a few minutes early to chat with the other participants. Years ago, I saw the foreign film
Italian for Beginners
and although I wasn’t looking to find love, I did hope to make some new local friends like in the movie, and thus far, this feels really possible.

I’m happy that the movie was, in a small way, prophetic, because everyone in class seems so engaged and interesting. Like the woman who sits across from me—she mentioned how her baby was born at two and a half pounds when that same baby had just come home from college to celebrate her twenty-first birthday!

I also quite like the gal who sits on my side of the conference table. She has to miss class in a few weeks because her son is getting married—on 11/12/13. Or how about the adorable young Moroccan couple who already speak so many languages that sometimes they forget their Italian and answer in Spanish or French? Their collective cuteness slays me.

I can’t believe how fast time goes by in class, either. I remember practically growing old and dying in some of my college courses, but here the hour passes in a wink and I wish I had so much more time.

Of course, I should have known there’d be
una mela marcia
(a bad apple) in our midst.

There’s an older couple who sits at the end of the table, clad in weird sweatshirts and elaborately framed glasses. The husband’s attendance has been sporadic for the past few weeks, first due to work schedules and then to this being cold and flu season. (It’s not an accident that I sit as far away from these two as possible, FYI.)

We begin every class by going around in a circle and greeting one another. As most of us are super-geeked to be there, our responses are basically Italian variations on “I AM FRIGGING SPECTACULAR, THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!!” But I’ve noticed that the wife of this couple has been saying she’s
cosi cosi
, which means so-so. Except she can’t seem to just say
cosi cosi
; for four weeks running, she’s insisted on asking what the word for so-so is before she can give her response.

Um, number one, write that shit down so you don’t have to ask every week; number two, we don’t actually care
how
you are because that’s not the purpose of the exercise—just say you’re
molto bene
so we can get on with the class; and number three, stop giving us the big sigh before you ask what so-so means, all right? It’s abundantly clear you’d like to discuss your troubles at length and
that is not okay
. This is
Italian class, not therapy, so if you’re compelled to talk about all your feels, please consult an appropriate professional. I paid for a full sixty minutes of this class and every minute you waste being cagey about your emotional health is a minute I’m not learning.

In other words?

Chiudi il culo!
(STFU.)

Also, this lady wears a bowling hand brace to compensate for her carpal tunnel and that bugs me.

When Fletch asked how I was sure it was a bowling brace, I replied, “Because it says
Brunswick
on it.”

After our instructor tacitly ignores Brunswick’s weekly cry for attention, we begin to discuss numbers. Our homework was to study numbers one through twenty, so naturally, I learned up to number one hundred. (Again, it’s with deep regret that I wasn’t hip to the pleasures of being the teacher’s pet back in the day.)

So, Donatella says we’re going to count to twenty and asks us to repeat after her. We get to number three before Brunswick throws us completely off course. Here’s the thing—when you’re learning a language, it’s imperative to hear the word BEFORE you can pronounce it, hence the listen-
then
-repeat command. But like every single other time, we get a couple of words in of listening and repeating before Brunswick loses the pace and begins to say the words
with
the instructor, ergo, no repeating. Dollars to doughnuts, this woman could throw an entire stadium off by clapping on the wrong beat.

Accidenti!
(Damn it!)

When we finally manage to count to twenty, Brunswick makes an important discovery.

“I thought
venti
meant coffee,” she begins. “At Starbucks, venti means coffee.”

“Actually, it’s a size,” says the nice 11/12/13 woman next to me. “It means twenty ounces.”

(Fine, maybe I don’t know everyone’s names yet, but I figure
I have only so much brain capacity, so I’m better off filling it with verb conjugations.)

“But I thought everything was in French, because of the
grande
,” Hand Brace argues. “Does
grande
mean sixteen ounces in French?”

“Non,”
reply the Moroccan students in unison.

Donatella tries to move us along to the numbers after twenty, but Brunswick is having none of it. “Then why would Starbucks do that? That makes no sense. They should do Italian OR French because it’s confusing. In fact, that’s why I don’t even like their coffee.
I’m
a Dunkin’ Donuts person. Why would anyone pay four dollars for a cuppa joe when Dunk’s is so much better?”

It now occurs to me that Brunswick spends a lot of class time asking why about questions that have no answer except, “Because that’s how it’s done.” Why do the Italians use the indefinite article? Why are there masculine and feminine words? Why are flowers masculine when very clearly it’s ladies who like them? How come the h is silent? How come our teacher pronounces
h
like “hache”? Why are some verbs irregular?

What matters is not the why of these rules, but that they exist at all. We need to
learn
the specifics, not
debate
them. This is Rudimentary Italian, taking place in the basement of a far-flung suburban insurance office, not a seminar on Advanced Linguistics at Oxford University.

Brunswick continues her diatribe. “What about tall, then? Is that Italian? How come tall is actually small at Starbucks?”

That’s when it hits me that Brunswick is a
time burglar
.

Specifically, she’s stealing
my
time with her inane questions and now she is my nemesis. It’s one thing to have legitimate questions—I mean, this is a classroom and we’re here to be taught. We’re all beginners and it’s expected that we’ll make mistakes. Being able to ask questions without feeling like a dipshit is one of the biggest benefits of having become middle-aged. I can think of dozens of
instances in my college classes where I didn’t seek clarification because I was too embarrassed to raise my hand. What might have been illuminated had I not been afraid to ask?

Yet what this woman fails to realize is that she’s ignoring the social cues that her questions are not appropriate, as they do nothing to edify any of us. What’s even worse is she’s now thrown the entire class off course and everyone’s busy trying to explain beverage sizes to her in regard to a coffee shop she
actively avoids.

Nothing about our conversation matters, so it’s up to me to get us back on track.

I snap, “It’s a marketing term, okay? Can we please move on?”

Donatella shoots me what I swear is a grateful look and we proceed to thirty, which is
trenta
.

“Hey, trenta is the newest Starbucks size and . . .”

Accidenti!

Donatella wrests control of the class away from Brunswick and we continue with our lessons. Once we complete the numbers section, we begin to discuss geography. She explains how Italy is a very diverse country, and each region has distinct characteristics. Before she can describe any of said characteristics, Brunswick feels compelled to chime in. “Do the north and the south still hate one another?”

Donatella takes a moment to consider the least stupid question Brunswick has ever posed. “Well, the relationship is a little more complicated than that,” she begins. “You see, the south does not have the economic opportunities found in the north, so—”

Brunswick says, “When I was a kid, we lived in Highland Park, a block away from the Highwood border, and Highwood used to be full of Italians.”

The fact that she doesn’t actually say Eye-talian is a pleasant surprise.

She continues. “Why was it full of Italians, I wonder? Anyway, we had northern Italians on one side and southern Italians on the other and they HATED one another. They fought about everything—the hedges, the trees, who was supposed to shovel. We never did understand why they hated each other so much. My dad said he never saw anything like it.”

I glance around the room and notice half a dozen students mid-eye-roll.

Donatella takes a breath, smiles tightly, and continues. “So, Italy is made up of twenty regions.”

I want to cheer her ability to ignore the intrusion, but I’m too interested in what she has to say. Turns out, she’s just finished the itinerary for the annual trip she hosts in the spring—a cooking tour of the Amalfi Coast! The trip is all-inclusive, with luxury accommodations and tons of side trips.

(Sidebar: Apparently Brunswick is a huge fan of gnocchi, but she doesn’t understand why we don’t pronounce the
g
the same way we do in the USA.)

This tour might be just the thing for me. I’m in this class because I plan to go to Italy, but maybe I’d be better off going with a group and a set itinerary? I fear that on my own, I would eat my own weight in gelato while sitting in my hotel room watching Italian soap operas. (If my history is any indication, my
Eat, Pray, Love
goal will morph into
Eat, Eat, Lounge
.) Maybe I need the social interaction of a group tour? Unless Brunswick is going, in which case, I will look at my globe to determine the farthest point away from her I could get.

Classmates begin to ask questions about the tour, as we’re all quite interested. 11/12/13, who’s traveled with our instructor before, wants to know if some of the same guides will be used because they were great last time. The mother of the preemie is curious if she could book her own flight. Instead of Lufthansa, she’d prefer to use her miles on American.

(Sidebar: Did you know you can get a ticket to Rome off-peak for twenty-five thousand miles?! How was I not informed?)

I ask if I could upgrade, not because I’m so goddamned special, but more because I’m fairly claustrophobic and dread wedging my large ass in a tiny seat for eight hours. Also? Snacks!

“Upgrading costs money,” Brunswick informs me.

Really?
That’s
a news flash. I thought I could just work my way to the good seats on the merits of my charm alone, or perhaps trade some shiny beads. Does Lufthansa accept repainted dressers as payment? I seem to have them in spades.

She continues. “Why would you want to upgrade? It’s not like Business Class is so much better. Why can’t you sit with the rest of the tour? What if your upgrade puts you on a different flight? If I go,
I’d
definitely sit in Coach.”

Upgrade it is.

Our session ends promptly at seven o’clock every week as Donatella has another class directly after this one. We’re all too courteous to linger because our time is up, so we quickly gather up our
quaderni
(notebooks) and, in my case, empty venti-sized Starbucks cup.

Except, of course, for Brunswick.

“Hey, can you check my homework from two weeks ago?” she asks, wedging in front of where I’m currently donning my coat. She thrusts the sheet toward Donatella’s kind face, because, of course she does.

“You understand I have a class waiting, yes?” Donatella asks.

“It won’t take you long,” Brunswick replies, flopping down in a chair next her.

I exit, making a mental note to look up the Italian word for
douche bag
.

As annoyed as I am, I still find myself smiling as I climb into my car. How am I concurrently so annoyed and yet still feel so happy?

As I drive home, I realize that the only thing I enjoy more than saying yes, checking items off my list, or learning Italian is having found a new nemesis.

Game on,
doccia borsa.

Game on.

12.

T
HE
R
ECORD
S
HOWS
I T
OOK THE
B
LOWS

Partway through the semester, Brunswick quits the class. Our teacher relays she was too busy to make it on Monday nights. Doubt it. I bet with all the other hypermotivated students, she felt like she’d fallen behind and she couldn’t catch up because it’s impossible to learn something new when you never, ever once shut your word hole and open your ears.