Say "duty" five times fast.

I have far too many things to write about that are greater adventures, but I wanted to tell a fun little story here for two reasons: 1. To remember it myself; 2. To give you all a chance into my daily life.

The theme of this story centers around the blunders one learns while learning to speak Italian.

As most of you know, today is election day in North Carolina for some primaries and a really big issue known as Amendment 1. Because I feel strongly about this issue and am even more aware of my citizenship while living abroad, I made sure to do my civil duty and get my absentee ballot. Not having a printer, I've had to visit the cartoleria, or paper shop, to do all of my printing, faxing, and scanning.

In years (let's be real, months) in the past, I was so insecure with speaking to strangers that this would have been a near-impossible task. Speaking to unknown people involves spontaneous changes in conversation, unknown words, and sometimes impatience and even bigotry. Plus my need to be right always put a damper on chatting with someone new. But after all this time here, I've mostly gotten over all of that. Some people are just not going to have the will to talk to a straniera like me.

Thankfully, though, the young and older man that work in my local paper store aren't like that at all. I've gone in about 7 times since October to handle paperwork, and although we had never had a conversation before yesterday, they were always patient and kind with me. So I walk in the store tranquillamente with my pen drive, ask for them to print a document, and say I'd like to fill it out and then I need to scan it. Both of these men jumped back a bit so I insisted that it'd be really quick, but then I needed to scan this document.

The young man took my pen drive, printed out my ballot, and I stepped to the side to fill it out while he helped someone else. When I finished, I handed over the papers to the young man and he went to the fax machine. I pointed to the scanner and said, "Excuse me, I wanted--" to which the older man interrupted, "Yes, I remember," and the young man laughed, excusing himself for forgetting. Great customer service, right?

I thought so, too. Then I got a whopping dose of humility with a language lesson:

Old man: You know why I remember you wanted a scan?
Me: No, why is that?
Old man: Because you wanted to use the word scannerizzare but said scannare.
Me: Oh, excuse me, you're right....
Old man: Do you know what scannare means? (He chuckles.)
Me: No, what does it mean?

At this point I'm getting nervous thinking of all the things I could have said.

Then the old man takes a pen in hand and holds it up to his neck, demonstrating how I wanted to skewer slaughter really quickly after having my document printed. Cue laughter and blushing. Remember that great customer service? The young man insisted it was okay. I decided his job must be really tough since he admitted it's difficult for him to hear the difference between "sheet" and, well, some other word starting with "sh" and ending with "t."