Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe Read Online Free Page A
Author: Jane Harrington
(Cold, actually. As I’ve already said.)
“What about Pompeii?” my mother has just suggested.
Pompeii! Now, THAT has potential. Lost world and all.
Ciao, baby!
Still Sunday, early evening-ish
----
Dear Delia,
Pompeii is very cool, a little weird, and decidedly creepy. Except for all the roofs being gone from every building, the town looks just as it did in 79 AD right before it was covered in spewing ash. (Spewing Ash. That would be a good name for a band, don’t you think?) It was there one day—a regular Italian town with, like, 20,000 people living in it—and then it WASN’T there. It was HISTORY. (Hehe.)
We took this bus there with an Italian guide who had one of those hairdos that’s parted real far over on the side and then lopped over the top of the head, very convincingly (NON) covering up a humongoid bald spot. His name was Sergio.
He gave us stickers to wear—big, round, green things with white numbers on them. I was number 11, and—choosing not to put this big round thing on my top, for fear of drawing unneeded attention to my, uh, TOP—I placed it on the right butt of my shorts. Which, for some reason, caused a reaction from my mother.
“Brady,” she said, “don’t you think that’s inappropriate?”
“What’s wrong with wearing a sticker on the right butt of my shorts?” I asked her.
“It’s just, somehow, inappropriate,” she said.
(I know what I’m getting her, now, for her birthday. A thesaurus, so she can find some synonyms for “inappropriate.” This is becoming tiresome.)
Even though this made no sense to me, I decided to be an accommodating daughter, and I peeled the sticker off the right butt of my shorts. Then I put it in a different place: the left butt of my shorts.
Her reaction to this was a LOOK and a gesture with her hand. But since I don’t have ESP, and I’m not fluent in sign language (her hand-wave looked something like the one I’ve seen for the word “elephant” . . . or maybe it’s “cabbage”), I had no choice but to ignore her.
I did end up moving the sticker again, but it was not because of my mother. It was because of Sergio.
You see, he said something in Italian to us as we were taking our seats on the bus, IN FRONT (mio madre’s idea—PLEASE!), which my mother scrambled to translate from the Italian phrase book. But before she found anything, he WINKED at her and repeated what he said, in English, with a major Italian accent (probably fake, just to impress tourists), which was, “Beautiful ladies, welcome!”
Then he touched his cheek, looked at me, and said something else in Italian, laughing in an Italian sort of way. I stared at him like he was from Mars (which I think he may be), while my mother flipped through the book again. Of course, he translated himself before she could find any of the words. (WHY, exactly, was he speaking in two languages?) Touching his cheek again, he said to me, “Flower child?” and laughed some more. I grabbed the phrase book from Mom and began to search for the Italian word for “moron” (which, by the way, is not in there—what a useless book), but by then he had taken up the microphone and was speaking to the bus-load of people in some combination of Italian and English (and Martian).
“Your little flower’s cute,” my mother whispered to me.
CUTE. Yes, I strive for CUTE. And I especially want people of the boomer generation to think I am CUTE
.
So I peeled the number sticker off my shorts and put it over the flower on my cheek.
I know that made no sense. But it was somehow satisfying.
When we got to Pompeii, Sergio displayed more mad tendencies by producing from under his seat a red umbrella. There was not a cloud in the sky, but he carried this umbrella around Pompeii. I did find it useful, though, since I made the decision early on that I was going to stay as far from him as possible, and the red umbrella served as sort of a flag to show me where he was, so I could hang back a bit and
“What about Pompeii?” my mother has just suggested.
Pompeii! Now, THAT has potential. Lost world and all.
Ciao, baby!
Still Sunday, early evening-ish
----
Dear Delia,
Pompeii is very cool, a little weird, and decidedly creepy. Except for all the roofs being gone from every building, the town looks just as it did in 79 AD right before it was covered in spewing ash. (Spewing Ash. That would be a good name for a band, don’t you think?) It was there one day—a regular Italian town with, like, 20,000 people living in it—and then it WASN’T there. It was HISTORY. (Hehe.)
We took this bus there with an Italian guide who had one of those hairdos that’s parted real far over on the side and then lopped over the top of the head, very convincingly (NON) covering up a humongoid bald spot. His name was Sergio.
He gave us stickers to wear—big, round, green things with white numbers on them. I was number 11, and—choosing not to put this big round thing on my top, for fear of drawing unneeded attention to my, uh, TOP—I placed it on the right butt of my shorts. Which, for some reason, caused a reaction from my mother.
“Brady,” she said, “don’t you think that’s inappropriate?”
“What’s wrong with wearing a sticker on the right butt of my shorts?” I asked her.
“It’s just, somehow, inappropriate,” she said.
(I know what I’m getting her, now, for her birthday. A thesaurus, so she can find some synonyms for “inappropriate.” This is becoming tiresome.)
Even though this made no sense to me, I decided to be an accommodating daughter, and I peeled the sticker off the right butt of my shorts. Then I put it in a different place: the left butt of my shorts.
Her reaction to this was a LOOK and a gesture with her hand. But since I don’t have ESP, and I’m not fluent in sign language (her hand-wave looked something like the one I’ve seen for the word “elephant” . . . or maybe it’s “cabbage”), I had no choice but to ignore her.
I did end up moving the sticker again, but it was not because of my mother. It was because of Sergio.
You see, he said something in Italian to us as we were taking our seats on the bus, IN FRONT (mio madre’s idea—PLEASE!), which my mother scrambled to translate from the Italian phrase book. But before she found anything, he WINKED at her and repeated what he said, in English, with a major Italian accent (probably fake, just to impress tourists), which was, “Beautiful ladies, welcome!”
Then he touched his cheek, looked at me, and said something else in Italian, laughing in an Italian sort of way. I stared at him like he was from Mars (which I think he may be), while my mother flipped through the book again. Of course, he translated himself before she could find any of the words. (WHY, exactly, was he speaking in two languages?) Touching his cheek again, he said to me, “Flower child?” and laughed some more. I grabbed the phrase book from Mom and began to search for the Italian word for “moron” (which, by the way, is not in there—what a useless book), but by then he had taken up the microphone and was speaking to the bus-load of people in some combination of Italian and English (and Martian).
“Your little flower’s cute,” my mother whispered to me.
CUTE. Yes, I strive for CUTE. And I especially want people of the boomer generation to think I am CUTE
.
So I peeled the number sticker off my shorts and put it over the flower on my cheek.
I know that made no sense. But it was somehow satisfying.
When we got to Pompeii, Sergio displayed more mad tendencies by producing from under his seat a red umbrella. There was not a cloud in the sky, but he carried this umbrella around Pompeii. I did find it useful, though, since I made the decision early on that I was going to stay as far from him as possible, and the red umbrella served as sort of a flag to show me where he was, so I could hang back a bit and
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