Rant Number Tre

As I said in my last post, I have recently dealt with some really stupid people. They aren’t ignorant, because an ignorant person has never had the correct information available. A stupid person has the facts, the proof, the research, all in front of them, and they refuse it.

So yeah, a lot of Italians are actually stupid. Probably just as stupid as people in other countries, but after living in a country with a population of 6 million, and being back in Italy with its population of more that 60 million, I feel I am coming in contact with more dumbasses.

Let’s start with my stupid mother-in-law. She believes, like way too many others, that cold air causes you to get sick. She freaks out if you try to leave the house with wet hair, even if it’s 100 degrees outside. She thinks air conditioning, or a breeze, will give you what’s called torcicollo and there is nothing you can say to make her change her mind. When my oldest daughter was 10 and we were visiting the nonni, I had her wash the dishes after dinner, much to the dismay of Nonna. The next day, my daughter was sick with vomiting. My monster-in-law yelled at me and said it was my fault because i made her do the dishes and she must have splashed water on her abdomen, resulting in her getting sick. It was most likely all the crap my kid ate the day before.

So people here would rather die of the heat than risk dying from getting any air blown on them. We were in a large shopping mall once and we saw a kid, about 6, all bundled up with coat, scarf and hat. He was running towards the exit of the mall, and his mother, in a panic, yelled, “Mariooo, don’t run, you might sweat!” It was about 65F out that day. Mario is going to die of heat exhaustion before he is going to die from the cold. To this day, all of us in the family still say, “Mariooo…you might sweat!” whenever we see people all bundled up.

My mother-in-law wears furs, and she can’t wait for the temperature to get really cold so she can show them off, so when Naples hits 70F, they come out. Because, you know, 70 is really fucking cold. She also smokes. A lot. Like two packs a day. And when she would visit us in the last place we lived, and I made her smoke outside, she said smoking outside would give her bronchitis. I was like, here, let me fix that for you: smoking outside would give her bronchitis.

And smoking will be my number 4.