Day #1 - "This Is Why America Is The Best"

I woke up this morning around 10 AM to the house phone ringing-- It was my grandma, who then called my cell phone, left a voice mail on both phones, and then called the house again (naturally leaving another voicemail). She was calling to make sure I was awake, because you never know if the car being sent to take me to Newark might come early. The car, scheduled to come at 1 PM, did not, in fact, come early, and at 1 PM I headed through the city to New Jersey, the driver, a really nice guy, talking the whole time to me about his son, my age, at Hofstra, and how they went to a Yankee game the other day, because their first game was rained out, but the game they wound up going to was nice, and even though it's summer weather now, he still wore a sweater and was comfortable.... If you're still awake and reading this, you made it farther than I did in the car, because I blatantly fell asleep during this conversation (monologue?).

But, there was no traffic, and I made it to Newark early, and progressed pretty much without incident until security, where, after crossing through the metal detector, I was putting back on my shoes and collecting my things when the guy next to me starts chatting up the TSA officers, one woman and one guy, and it somehow got to the point where the woman officer was joking about beating up the guy officer, and asked how much we'd pay her to do it. I offered her $10, and the male officer reminded me that if he wanted to, he could hold me at the air port indefinitely and, at worst, give me a full body cavity search. So I apologized and went on my way to the gate, where I sat for about two hours before boarding.

Boarding, take off, the flight, and landing were completely uneventful. That might be because, courtesy of the pharmacy that is Dose, I knocked the fuck out. The other day, Dose sent me an email regarding the $100+ spent at the iTunes store last month between me, my brother, and my mom. Being a good son, last night I downloaded the $16 Frederic Chopin collection from iTunes, and listened to it on the plane (it's, like, 40 hours altogether), which, if the ambien didn't put me right to sleep, Chopin definitely did (in a good way, though. Totally worth the $16, Dose. I swear!).

After the flight, the line for customs was maybe the longest fucking line I've ever seen in the history of the world, with zero organization whatsover. It was literally three stations with door-sized entranceways for people to approach and show their passports at the end of a big empty room. No roped off lines, no officers directing people to any specific area. About four flights came in at the same time, and it was literally just a room packed with people shoving to get to the front (if you've ever imagined what Auschwitz was like when the Allies arrived with trucks of bread, I'd venture to say this was a pretty accurate depiction). 

This took about an hour in and of itself. The title of this post comes from the two women behind me on line; one was an extremely obnoxious bird-faced blonde woman, traveling with her silent husband, who was complaining very loudly that people who got in after them should move to the back of the line (despite the fact that there was no line, I understood her point, even if she was complaining rather annoyingly). The woman behind her was American, with her young daughter, living in Italy because her husband was Italian. Her daughter kept screaming "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" over and over, and the mom blatantly ignored her while complaining to the bird-faced bitch about how "in America, this would never happen. In America, there would be ropes. There would be lines. That's why America is the best, hopefully, in the world, forever." The bird-faced ho' bag was eating that shit up, and because no one would stop people from pushing forward in the line, she decided that the best plan of action would be to do exactly what she was bitching about, and push her way to the front as obnoxiously as possible without any regard for human life or safety. 

All the while, that kid is yelling "MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!" and everyone around us is getting really pissed off, myself included. She wasn't even making an attempt to silence her kid. Eventually, finally, the mom remembers she has a daughter who won't shut the fuck up, and approaches a cop, asking to cut the line, and he says "There are other children here, not just yours, that's unfair," to which the mom spends another half hour complaining that in America, she'd have been let right through, and that the Italian system of doing things is very upside down. These women are one of the few reasons I don't like being American.

After that horrific ordeal, I took the train to Rome's central train station, bought a 7Up, promptly choked on it at the front of a line full of people, turned red, and had to catch my breath before I could pay, and then took the train to Florence, and a taxi to campus. Then I went to bed for two hours, and now I'm writing this blog. All told, neither feels like a very good use of my time in Florence, and I'm going to stop now and go do something productive, like walk around or, you know, learn Italian (I watched Step Brothers on the flight here, and my roommate Michael wants to watch it tonight, because he's never seen it. So the odds of me doing anything productive today are slim). The campus itself is beautiful, though it's 10,000 degrees and probably only going to get hotter, so, you know, that blows. I don't know much else about the program yet, but we have orientation tomorrow, so I guess I'll figure it out.