We Must Be Rich - Italian Style

Being good parochial school kids, we knew it was a sin to utter bad words.  We never swore back then.

The oldest of my brothers and I were outside playing with the neighbor kids which we usually did when we hung out together.  One of the boys from two blocks away always came to visit the boys across the street from us.  He was a nice kid but kind of wild.  His name was Claude. 

One day while playing outside, Claude uttered the “F” word.  We were all shocked. None of us swore. 

When Dad got home from work, we told him about what happened.  He asked us if we knew where this boy lived which we did.  We didn’t know that our Dad would take us to his house.  Dad loaded the two of us in the Buick and off we went to Claude’s house. 

While Dad waited in the car, my brother and I trudged up all those stairs to his house and rang the doorbell.  Claude’s mother came to the door and we told her that her son used the “F” word, just as Dad instructed us to do.

Claude’s mother said, “Well, that must have just melted your little ears” and closed the door in our faces.  There we stood looking at each other and proceeded down the stairs to our waiting car.  Dad had a little smile on his face and asked us what the mother said.  I think Dad was hoping she would have said she would punish him or put him on restriction.  When we told Dad what she said, he said, “You’re shitting me.”  Yes, that was a swear word but I guess that is the only thing he could say because he was flabbergasted that Claude’s mother didn’t seem to care.  God help us if we were the ones who swore.

Funny thing, about 15 years ago, my parents, husband, aunt, uncle, and I went to Balboa High School for a Variety Show fundraiser.  At intermission, in the lobby, I saw a man with the same last name as Claude, but a different name on his name tag.  I went up to him and asked him if he knew Claude.  He said that he was Claude but went by his middle name because he hated his first name ever since he was a kid.  It was years since we had seen each other, the last time when we were both about 15 years old. Now we were adults.  I relayed the story to him about what happened that day when we went to his house and told him what his mother said.  He was very gracious and apologized many times.  We both had a good laugh over it.

Dad never swore in front of us kids.  He used to say things at home kind of under his breath and when we asked him what he said, Dad said that he found gold.  My brother and I looked at each other and I said to my brother later that we must really be rich because Dad was always finding gold.  It was not far fetched because Dad had a sluice box and panned for gold a lot when he went fishing. 

It wasn’t until we were older that we really found out what Dad was saying.  In Italian, the “F” word sounded like “I Found Gold.”  Boy were we naïve!!! 

We didn’t think back then that it was a sin when you swore in another language because no one knew what you were saying and the phrases sounded pretty, as most Italian words do, after all; it is one of the romance languages.

When I worked at a City Hall years ago, the mayor would come to the City Clerk’s office to sign some documents and he could not resist the temptation to tease me which he did quite often by calling me “the EYE-Talian.” I would have to tell him that the damned gringos don’t now how to say the word “Italian” correctly. He always laughed and continued to tease me whenever possible.

I decided to do something about it.  I purchased a plastic horse and cut its head off. When I delivered the mayor’s agenda packet, I had a special box containing the head of the horse (like from the Godfather) in with his agenda items.  He was such a good sport and when he came back into City Hall after that I told him I could not be responsible for what Uncle Guido would do.  I don’t even have an Uncle Guido!

But let’s face it, Italians don’t really need to verbally swear.  They have enough hand and arm movements to get their message across pretty well without saying a thing.  Just ask those who swim with the fishes.