27 Quotes by Sari Gilbert

Even when I first visited Italy as a studentessa back in the sixties, our orientation program aboard SS Cristoforo Colombo had included a lesson explaining that whereas in the US a long period of time could elapse between a first kiss and a full sexual encounter, in Italy kisses were considered a nest-immediate prelude to rapport I sessuali.

... when you can’t read - or hear - the signs that tell you about a Person’s educational level or background, your attraction becomes above all physical. The result? It can be only too easy to get sexually involved with - and possibly married to - someone who when it fines to long-term relationships turns out to be totally unsuitable.

And while I agree - and who wouldn’t? - that being in Love is the optimum, I have learned that what we call love, or at least what I called love, was often only a ferocious physical attraction.

For historical reasons – centuries spent as the subjects of warring city-states with the rule of law often taking a back seat to power politics and family loyalties – many Italians, especially those from points south, have little respect for the law and, seemingly, little understanding of its purpose, which is that of setting the boundaries for civil cohabitation.

In Rome, instead, it is clear: people know that most of the time they can get away, not with murder, of course, but with many other misdemeanors. The result? Ignoring the rules has become a quasi national habit.

In Italy, most laws are honored more in the breach than the observance. “Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno”, goes one saying that means, “pass a law and we’ll find a way to get around it”. You don’t have to spend much time in Rome to realize that stop signs, and even red lights, are often disregarded, as are those reading “no parking or standing”, and even “one way”.

Absenteeism runs rife, with too many unethical doctors willing to supply fake illness certificates. "My dentist was flummoxed when he was asked by a Finanza major to provide his wife with a (false) certificate claiming he’d been performing oral surgery on her on a day she had skipped work. But he did it. “What else could I do? I mean, I might need the guy for a favor sometime.

And there may be some connection, too, with the Roman Catholic Church’s somewhat flexible attitude towards sin and thus, in general, towards wrongdoing. Otherwise, how to explain that 137 years after Italy became a modern nation-state, so many people still choose simply to ignore laws they don’t like. Maybe other nationalities would be the same if in their countries, too, law enforcement were considered an optional, even by the people charged with that task.

It is late afternoon and the daily, or nightly, game of cat and mouse between Rome’s vigili urbani, or traffic police, and the unlicensed street peddlers who set up their portable tables and lamps in Piazza Sant’Egidio where I live, or nearby, is about to start. And, as usual, the mice will win. Not because they are smarter but simply because they care more about breaking the law than the authorities care about enforcing it.