Can I kiss you?

I thought the season of asking for kisses in Italy had passed, but apparently it hasn't.  During the holidays the question is disguised, making it a bit easier to get away with.   

The first time I heard, "Posso darti auguri?" (can I give you my best wishes?)  I was confused.  It was in the beginning of December when I was asked by a friend of a friend and I said, "Why couldn't you?"  It seemed strange that he thought he needed permission to say Merry Christmas.  The next thing I knew he was getting up from his desk and coming towards me.  Then he said "Auguri" and gave me the double kiss (which I've finally learned starts on the left, referring to an earlier post, A Kiss is Not Just a Kiss).  And that was that.  I'd learned what "Posso darti auguri?" meant.  It's not asking for permission to give best wishes.  It's asking for permission to give kisses.   From then on I was prepared for the holiday season. 

But what I've never been prepared for is off-season. (As in, not during the holidays and not masked with, "Can I give you auguri?")  In off-season, I can count on two hands the number of times I've been asked for a kiss by a stranger.  I know the 'count on hands' expression is usually used to indicate how seldom something happens.  And we usually only refer to one hand.  As in, "I can count on one hand how many times you've offered to wash the dishes."  But in this case, I'm astounded that the number of times I've been asked to be given a kiss by a stranger is actually high enough to count on TWO hands.   

Why would a person that I don't know think I'd want a kiss from them and why would they want to kiss me?  In all of my travels over the past twenty years, which I think it's safe to say covers a lot of territory,  the only place I've been asked for a kiss by a complete stranger is in Italy.  What makes a chubby, more-than-middle-aged man in the park think that after interrupting my attempt at a little acquarello I would to want to kiss him?

And why would an encroaching-on-elderly man on the running path that has taken a walk every day since his open-heart surgery think he could kiss me?  I'd actually talked to him long enough the previous day (45 seconds) to hear about the surgery.  I suppose that justifies his asking for the sweaty kiss the next day.  We were already good friends.  Or maybe he had to reset his pacemaker and he thought a kiss would do the trick.

Then there was the attempt at dusk last week on my way home from a run in the rain. I was on the regular road instead of the trail and I saw a man checking his mailbox.  Actually, I was kind of surprised to see such an almost-ancient man out in the rain.  As I was passing, he asked if I was afraid to be out in the dark.  I stopped and said, "No, should I be?"  I thought there might be something about the neighborhood that I still had to learn.  But the only thing I learned is that there's yet another hopeful heartbreaker living down the street.  It went like this. 

Instead of responding to my "No, should I be?" he simply said, "You have such a pretty face.  Can I give you a kiss?"  And even though he was probably 85-years old, I gave him a gentle shove on his shoulder  (which luckily didn't make him topple) and sweetly said, "Are you out of your mind?" which I suppose at his age he actually could have been. 

I won't continue with the examples.  That's pretty much how it goes.  And don't forget, there are enough of these love affairs to count on two hands.  I've decided that the next time it happens instead of just accepting the fact that I'm in Italy and saying, "That's aMORe!" I'm going to pretend I'm in Canada and say, "That's ENOUGH, eh?"




A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out all the years.  --Rupert Brooke
Ok.  That explains everything.
   

Don't Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I take a walk around my neighborhood every night between 1:30 and 3:00a.m.  I do it so I can hear the dogs bark.  And bark and bark and bark and bark.  It's not that I love the sound of barking dogs.  In fact, during the day, I hate it.  But at night, I find a little peace in it.  I guess you might call it peaceful revenge. 

I live in a neighborhood filled with dogs.  I can't ride my bike or run anywhere without being gruffly interrupted by a mad dog.  In the second house on the left there are four.  The next house has two. Then the next three houses each have one.  And that's when I head out towards the trail.  In the direction of the mountains the first house on the left has six.  Then it's quiet for three minutes until I'm greeted by four more.  This is just in the first 600 yards (as in unit of measure, not dog confines).  It only gets worse as I get more miles into my rhythm and reverie.   If I have to look on the bright side, at least I'm usually being barked at and chased on the other side of a hedge or fence, but it's still a bit alarming.

I've been asking myself day after day if the barking bothers the dog owners or if they even hear it.  I wonder if they're embarrassed that their pets are such a nuisance.  I'm pretty sure the answers to these questions are no or I would have seen at least one shy smile as if to say they understood that it happened everyday and they were sorry for the disturbance.  It's when I continued looking for these shy smiles and not finding any that I finally decided to make their dogs bark at night.  And thus began my much-later-than-evening strolls.

In the still hours of the night when I'm sure the farmers are deep asleep, their barking dogs make me (not so shyly) smile.   I stop to enjoy them.  If I keep walking, the pleasure is fleeting because the barking stops as soon as I've passed.  So I've found a couple of good places to rest, lean on a tree and pretend I'm that black cut-out silhouette guy smoking a pipe.  I bend my leg just like he does and I  listen to them bark.  And listen and listen and listen and listen. 

I like to imagine what's going on inside.  By that hour I'm hoping that the house is really cold
because the fire lit before bed has probably gone out.  Farmers go to bed early.  There's nothing to do around here when it's dark.  So, I picture them lying there for a bit, listening to the dogs and assuming that there's no danger and the barking will stop.  But as long as I keep my pose, the dogs keep barking.  So then I imagine them rolling over and putting their handmade quilts over their heads so they don't hear it anymore.  But the barking continues.  Eventually, they have no choice.  They don their icy slippers that have been chilling on the cold tile floor for the past several hours and go to the window.  This is the part I really like.  I don't have to take cover until they're totally out of bed.  My warning comes from the clank of the inside window.  They have to open that before they can get to the outside shutters.  This means that for a few seconds at 2 a.m. or so, they're getting a nice blast of cold air up their pajama sleeves.   That's when I smile, think "just what the doctor ordered!" and move on to the next patient.  

As hard as I've searched I haven't found anything that says, "Revenge is the best medicine."  In fact,  I'm sure it's no surprise that most of what I've found is a bit more like, "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind," by Gandhi . Or  "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves," by Confucius.
 
But I did run across this, by Anne Frank. "I won't bore you anymore on the subject...all my plans of revenge...must be abandoned in order to keep the peace.  Oh I'm becoming so sensible."  And then I smiled because SENSIBILE in Italian and SENSIBLE in French and Spanish are all defined as 'sensitive' in English, which means 'having or displaying a quick and delicate appreciation of others' feelings.'  

Thanks to Anne (not Gandhi or Confucius) I've given up on this whole revenge thing.  It was just one of those daydreams I have when I'm running anyway.  It's not that I like the idea of becoming sensible (in English) because it seems a bit boring and lacks a certain.......je ne sais quoi.  Sensible people don't take walks in the rain without their umbrellas.  They don't buy knee-high boots with 37 eyelets and hooks that have to be re-laced every time they wear them when the same boots are available with a hidden zipper.  And they probably don't put sugar on their low-fat, diet cottage cheese.

So, rather than worrying that I'm becoming sensible in English, I tell myself that I'm becoming SENSIBILE or SENSIBLE in one of the other languages and console myself with my kindness.


 
"Revenge is like biting a dog because the dog bit you."  --Austin O'Malley
I thought I'd include that one just for laughs because it's really laughter that's the best medicine.