Sealed with an Italian Kiss

The last time I measured, one meter was about three feet.  Although the metric system never caught on in the States, that's one that stuck with me in third grade. I memorized that three feet was a yard, and I could visualize a yardstick. Now that I live in Italy I just visualize yardsticks when someone talks about meters and I'm all set. And if I run out of yardsticks I switch to football fields.

Learning the temperature in celsius was also on my third grade teacher's list of things to teach, but all I remember is that 32 in one system equals zero in the other.  That's a hard one to compute because when the temp hits 0 degrees celsius Italians complain about the cold and for this Chicagoan it's a balmy 32.    

Most Italians talk more about their body temperature than the air temperature, so I've found a new helpful conversion. A healthy American is 98.6 degrees fahrenheit and a healthy Italian is 37 degrees celsius. The only difference is that when a temperature in fahrenheit goes up a little, Americans continue their day and still feel healthy. But as the celsius numbers climb, Italians stop everything because they're sick.  Of course all of this was before the coronavirus.  It doesn't care if you're imperial or metric.  Rising mercury means panic in both languages.

My Italian vocabulary increased with Covid 19 (pronounced  co-veed diciannove) but fortunately some words are similar or adopted from English.  Italians have been using English words for a long time.  Some of my favorites are weekend (weekend), shopping (shopping) (secondhand, of course) and picnic (picnic)....all words that we haven't used in Italy for a month. Now the English word that's making Italian headlines is lockdown (lockdown). (Note to self...use this on the next "which word is different?" test. Weekend, shopping, picnic, lockdown.)

For several weeks using 'lockdown' to describe the situation in Italy to my American friends was met with no objection. But when the coronavirus caught a flight to the US and I welcomed friends into the lockdown I was corrected and told their current status was 'safer-at-home.'  The next day with a different friend I politely used the new term, but was corrected once again.  His state was 'stay-at-home.' There seemed to be a friendly competition in titles and I understood that no one wanted to be 'sheltering-in-place.'

Emails from two friends in Michigan in 'quarantine' were a bit alarming until I continued reading about their neighborhood walks and trips to the grocery store. In Italian being in quarantena means that you are sick or you've been exposed to someone sick and grocery shopping and walks are forbidden. (I think it means the same in English, but I teach my Italian students, not my American friends.)

I'm doing my best to avoid quarantena, but I'm embracing the lockdown (seeing that I can't embrace anything else) and don't need a kinder, gentler term like 'stay-at-home.'  What would you rather say 10 years from now, "Remember the 2020 Lockdown?" or "Remember the 2020 Safer-At-Home?" And I'm already practicing, "I made this giant rug out of old sweaters when I was on lockdown," and "I learned this Bach piece on lockdown." I think it has a nice ring to it. 

We found out yesterday that Italians will be safer-at-home until April 13 which gives me enough time to double check the metric system. The math doesn't add up on social distancing. Italian laws say one meter while in America it's six feet. What happened to one meter equals a yardstick equals three feet? Have I been miscalculating since third grade or does the coronavirus respect cultural differences?  Two yardsticks would be nearly impossible in a country where "It's nice to meet you" is sealed with a kiss.