Globalization and Charades

Two subjects to pontificate about today. Probably unrelated, but equally provide some thought provoking reflections on my part.

First, and obvious observation, I am a long way from home and home is a long way from me. I am bashfully surprised how much goes on in the world that I never bothered to know about or notice. To reside in Europe is to live in a much more global community. Just by geographical location, you pay more attention to a bigger part of the world… or at least I have. In Philadelphia the local news was my main source of information, and the weather was usually the main topic of discussion. Here, my news comes from the BBC and the US portion is only a tiny segment in the day. I know more about the Korean Hostages, India’s woman president, Turkey joining the EU and the floods in England than what is going on in the states. This has definite advantages, I am clearly being a better informed global citizen, but I miss knowing what is going on at home. I miss being a somewhat informed American. Now, I think this will improve when I have an internet connection and my sole source of English isn’t from BBC world channel, which is the only one I can understand from our selection of Italian cable channels. In fact, the Internet itself has become a major obsession in my life. Senza il Interneto, I have been suffering greatly. Right off, I have been having trouble keeping in touch, emailing, blogging, etc etc. All of our US bills and accounts are online, all of the Visa information is online. Everything, it seems is online, when you are not! How is the world so big and so small at the very same time? I must reflect on this greatly… perhaps in another posting I will have an answer. For now I will let this fester in my mind.

Now, Charades. Perhaps the most important tool that I have taken with me abroad is the ability to gesticulate. In relation to the ponderings above, I have found charades to be a global tool for communication. The rules are not necessarily followed on a global scale, but everyone knows enough of the game to participate. So far charades have made life possible in Italy. Most of my recent banking excursion was supplemented by rounds and rounds of charades. Moving all of our stuff from one apartment across town to the next, charades. I was able to communicate to the landlord of the old room that I had swept and cleaned and that I was leaving by just a few simple mimicking gestures. I was able to secure taxis (hailing a cab does seem to be a universal motion of the arm), load all of my bags (and the cat) into three separate cab rides and arrive in the new apartment with little vocabulary. All through the miracle of a giant charade game called “life as an Italian illiterate”. My favorite charade round involved cutting a curtain rod.

I bought a small curtain rod at the local (for lack of better word) “junk” shop. Instead of a Wal-Mart or my blessed Target, the Romans have little teeny shops filled with odds and ends. In our neighborhood, I am intimately familiar with three of them. They are filled with things like Roma t-shirts and miniature coliseums, hammers, toilet paper, laundry detergent, hosiery and curling irons… totally random. Alas, in my favorite shop (with the best prices and the biggest selection) I found a curtain rod, which, by chance happened to be on my list of things that I needed for the apartment. In the bathroom there is a big marble sink, below the sink is a nice space for storage, but it had no door, it was just open to expose my ablutions to the world. Very unacceptable to a private girl like me, so I decided I would make a curtain for the vanity, hence the need for a curtain rod. This made finding the curtain rod a very big accomplishment and I was very happy. Until returning home with the rod to find that it was at least six inches bigger than my cabinet. I knew I should have measured! I was so mesmerized and enchanted by the rod that I bought it in a frenzy of happiness, without thinking that it might not be the right fit.

Here I had two choices, I could take the rod back or I could make it work. Taking the rod back would have required a bigger charade vocabulary that I currently have in my arsenal. So I was determined to make it work. First I took out the kitchen scissors, even the cat seemed to laugh as I tried to take a pair of kitchen shears to a metal rod. Than I thought about bending it until it broke, too risky, it would never bend off cleanly. So I sat down on the couch with my rod and looked at it, waiting for a bit of divine inspiration. Perhaps it is because there are so many churches in Rome, but I have had a run of good luck with the divine. Just then, what do I hear out of my apartment window? The hot summer air lofted in, and with it, the sounds of a power tool, a saw! I had observed earlier that across the street, adjacent to the auto repair shop was some type of woodworking shed. I could see saw dust and hear drilling, pounding and sawing most of the afternoons. So off I went to meet the neighbor. Sure enough, just inside the slightly opened door was a whole room full of cutting appliances.

“Scusi, senor? Il mio Ilaliano es molto male” That is as far as I can go, it was time for the round of charades to begin. I showed him my curtain rod and then made the universal scissor motion with my index and middle fingers. I made a sad face and shook my head back in forth. Meanwhile, saying in English, “I cannot cut this, can you help?” After only a millisecond of furrowed brow, he understood either my English (which is doubtful) or my charades (which is likely) because he walked to his wall of cutting, proudly picked up a handsaw and said “eh?”. “Si, Si, Si!” I cried, with the customary bobbing head to show affirmation. I offered to do it myself, but maybe because I had already been so pathetic or perhaps because I was in a skirt, the nice man but the rod into the vice and made a nice clean cut, right where I pointed and then proceeded to sand down the end a bit. I offered to pay (again, through a series of overly animated gestures), but he politely declined. Now, I have a curtain in the bathroom vanity and a friend across the street!