Ciao, Professore!

Living in Bologna, Italy and teaching at L’Università di Bologna is still one of my fondest memories. I had finally arrived on the scene, or so it felt like that. I will never forget being introduced by my Joycean mentor there, Rosa Maria Bosinelli, one of the greatest mentors of young Joyceans to have played the role. Always gracious to the nth degree, when I first visited the Forlì campus, which is where I would teach for a year and a half (commuting from Castiglione Fiorentino part of the time), she introduced me as “Professore Fulton.” Ciao!

It was a heady time. I had been teaching for several years prior at The University of Texas at Austin, my alma mater, but now I was teaching the alma mater studiorum. Not bad for a kid who had dropped out of college a bit more than a decade before. But, while at UT, I was not allowed to be called “professor,” because I was primarily hired as an Academic Advisor, and my superiors did not cotton to the fact that the students were beginning to see me as their potential equals. I was told more than once to be aware of my “place,” so the furthest I got was a compromise of “Dr. Rob” by the those fun-loving rugrats of the Liberal Arts Honors Programs. But, that is neither here nor there, I was now “Professore.”

That was not the main reason why I have such fondness for the time there, but it was part of it. It was a sign that I had graduated from being post-doc to being doc. Moreover, it was based upon who I was, not from anyone I knew that was helping me along, and that can be an important feeling in life. Rosa Maria had believed in me as me, and that was priceless.

Once I learned how to interact with the Italian students and had sufficiently convince them that I actually do not have a Texas accent, the rest was the sheer joy of teaching.

But, what for me was most important about living in Bologna was that it was the first time that I was living in a country where I had to learn to survive in a language that was not my own without the constant aid of a native speaker as had been the case in Belgium. In Italy, we were both stranieri and had to learn the ropes as such. In Forlì I found my groove and had my haunts and coffee shops and lunch spots. I really felt that I was making it there as a foreigner. I was well aware that one will always be a straniero in Italy if not from there originally, but at least I was getting the support and acknowledgment from the locals that I was making an effort. I was drinking my morning espresso and eating my paste with them.

It was a major transition for me as a teacher and within academics. Because of Rosa Maria’s help, I was able to publish my book on James Joyce and to attend several conferences as a visiting scholar of interest. Unfortunately, as it was merely a visiting appointment and we had obligations to go to in Castiglione Fiorentino, it came to an end and things have a natural tendency to do. I was no longer “Professore” and by the time we got to CF, I was back to being Dr. Rob as we were teaching for a UT Study Abroad program. I was just “Rob” again, humbled back several years, and for the most part, I had to tell people that I really did teach at Bologna. It was a blow to the ego, which I did not always handle well, but in hindsight, I now see the significance. We can change from the inside, but if our environment is unwilling to see that change, than there is often nothing we can do, but wait out the course of Time.

While checking some stats on my blogs, I noticed that someone had typed in “professore fulton forlì” for a search on this blog, so perhaps to some people still out there, I am indeed still “Professore Fulton.”

Ciao!

Strange Affinities

Don’t know where this is going, but just throwing it out there to start thinking about it. The more that I am in India, the more it seems to be similar to Italy in many ways, which is rather mind-boggling.

Some of the things that I have noticed are the dynamics of the household, in which outwardly it is a male culture, but inwardly the females run the place, especially the mother-in-law, though often that is not a good thing for the poor wife, that is quite clear.

First-born sons are treated like gold, whereas the rest of the children must fight for whatever they get, and again especially the girls.

Indian and Italian children both run in packs here. It is seldom to see just one child, but rather an entire herd of them is the norm. They are always playing in the streets, often until very, very late at night.

Both cultures are very sexual in the media, yet, on the whole, both are quite conservative with social interactions. Of course, public displays of affection in Italy verge on the grotesque at times, but for the most part, Italians are quite conservative with social norms and what you can say and not say, or do. For fear of being see as the dreaded “che brutta figura.” There is a similar shame culture here as well.

The entire culture revolves around food and music. There is always music in the air at some level, and Indians love singing as much as they pride themselves on their food. If you are ever invited to eat with Indians, I hope that you haven’t eaten for four days because, like the Italians, they will have an endless buffet of dishes and as the guest, it is incumbent upon you to eat til you explode for fear of insulting the host or hostess. As such, I have surprisingly not lost the 10 or so pounds I had expected to while traveling here.

The Indians love India, as the Italians love Italy. Most Italians don’t travel outside of Italy and that could be said about the Indians as well. It is all here, why travel anywhere else? Culturally pride runs deep in both countries.

The languages are very similar in expression. I have learned just enough Tamil by now to be picking up on the fact that you never say the same thing twice. That is also the case with Italians. They both pride themselves on the fact that they can always say the same thing differently in many ways. Now, that has made learning Tamil and Italian more challenging, but I admire the richness of linguistic variety.

Religion is dominant in the culture, both secular and sacred. Just as churches dominate any Italian town and religious festivals will involve the entire community, so to do the Indians do religion on a grand scale. Every day is virtually devoted to one god or goddess, similar to the Italians preoccupation with the Saints’ days.

The concept of Time and Space are also quite similar. Except for in the North of Italy, where Time is actually rather “important” to many, Italian Time is something on its own. Things happen when they do, whether it is a train, a meal, or a large event. Likewise, to bother an Indian about Time is a fruitless endeavor. There is a laissez-faire approach that is maddening to most non-Italians and non-Indians, but when you embrace it, life takes on another dimension.

The same goes for Space. If you go to a movie in Italy and the theater is empty, you sit down in the middle, guaranteed, if one other person comes into the hall, he or she will sit right next to you. Personal space does not exist in either country and it is something that you have to get over quite quickly. Or, the shops here and in Italy are quite similar. You will have very small, specialized shops that are literally packed to the ceiling with things and what would take up a city block in America will be condensed into a broom-closet sized store in which the storekeeper has an uncanny way of knowing exactly where everything is among the items packed as densely as a neutron star. I remember going to the hardware store in Castiglion Fiorentino and was amazed that the man could navigate through the insanely labyrinthine stacks of merchandise to find the exact item, and seemingly could do so blindfolded.

The street culture is likewise quite similar. Italians often consider their apartments as merely where they go home to bed because the streets are their living rooms and dining rooms. Indian homes may very well just be an entryway and bedrooms with a small cooking area because they are always out on the streets. I am reminded time and time again of Naples being here because of the incredibly vibrant street culture at all times of the day and night.

Restaurants often don’t have menus here, but rather you just ask what they have that day. In addition, as with Italy, you cannot simply order, but it has to be a full conversation with the waiter, who will also try to persuade you, often successfully, to choose something you did not intend on ordering. When we went to eat with Handel in Tirunelveli, his British friend Tess and I looked at each other and asked what in the world are they talking about for so long, we’re just ordering, but it was a lengthy discussion. This always happened in the local restaurants in Italy as well.

Mere coincidences perhaps, but it has been interesting to see the similarities unfold. I will be curious to see how I look at Italian culture when I do return one day after my Indian experience. Vedremo...

The Day Time Stood Still

Without looking at my watch, I can tell you what time it is at the Bologna train station. It is twenty five minutes past ten in the morning, August 2, 1980, to be precise. Two things will strike your eye when you either approach the Bologna train station from the main entrance, or if you arrive there and are standing out in front and something just doesn’t seem right. Look for a moment, and it will start to stand out. Where there is now a MacDonald’s adjacent to the main entry hall, the architecture seems to be out of synch, from a different time, than it. Then, you may want to check you watch and to see what time it is so as to catch your train, (though ultimately, that may in itself prove to be an act of futility), but the clock reads 10:25, even though it is well into the afternoon.

Twenty-one years ago, on August 2, 1980, members of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari executed one of the most infamous civilian attacks in recent European history, known as the Strage di Bologna. They bombed the Bologna train station, killing 85 people, and literally stopping Time. The shock of the blast blew out the clock, and the city of Bologna has since decided to keep it there as a reminder, per non dimenticare, of what happened that day.

Bologna holds an interesting place in Italy, politically and socially. Theoretically, it is Communist by political stripes, though I often joked at the visible wealth there that it was “rich enough to be Communist.” Socially, it houses an extremely highly educated population and boosts the alma mater studiorium, which is more or less the mother of all universities, as L’Università di Bologna, where I was fortunate enough to be a visiting lecturer, is recognized as the oldest established western university, officially designated as such in 1988, celebrating its 900th anniversary, at which time the controversial Bologna Accord was signed, re-defining collegiate education in Europe on a grand scale.

Something else that makes Bologna special is its sense of city awareness and pride. People are really proud to be from Bologna, and they should be, it is an incredible city, very likely my favorite mid-sized city to date. It has an incredible infrastructure for civic events, and there always seemed to be something going on in Bologna that was celebrating being “bolognese.” In addition, it is a city that is highly geared to the personal and family level, and nearly every week in the summer months one can find some sort of program on the piazza maggiore, with kids running around, laughing and chasing pigeons, under the shade of the half-finished façade of the San Petronio Basilica.

The church itself has been a source of anxiety as well. Inside, on one of the tableaux paintings, there is a depiction of sinners being tormented in Hell, amongst them is no less than the prophet Mohammed. While living in Bologna, there was a controversial case in which seven Muslims were apprehended based on the suspicion that they were going to bomb the cathedral as retribution for the painting.

Any act of violence upon civilians is an act of social horror. The bombing of Bologna’s train station struck a deep, deep chord with all Italians, and was even more insidious because it was home-grown. The NAR was Italian. Similar to the Timothy McVeigh-masterminded event in Oklahoma City and the more recent tragedy in Norway at the hands of Anders Breivik, these were acts of terror from home.

Today, commemorating September 11, 2001, and the events that transpired that day, such acts are on my mind. They are still all unfathomable to me. Yet, the Bologna train station does stick out in my mind. Mainly because it was place that I have been to the most often where such an event took place. I had visited the Twin Towers years before when they were still standing, and was in complete awe of their monumental stature, but I have not been to other such sites, except for the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, where Pakistani terrorists attacked and lay siege to Mumbai, the result of 164 dead and over 300 wounded. Currently, the hotel has a police barricade around it as does the plaza in front of the Gateway to India to prevent any further attacks. Reminiscent of the November 2008 bombings, more deaths were recorded in Delhi this week at the hands of Pakistani attackers.

But, to return to Bologna, what made it different for me was that it was because I went to that station nearly every day to take a train to the Forlì campus, where my department was located. And, every time, upon approaching the station, I would see that clock stopped, and it would indeed give me pause as to how it had happened. I do remember feeling uncomfortable at times there, imaging what the scene must have been like at this station, which for me was usually a place to enjoy knowing that I was in Bologna. There would be moments, though, when I would seem to have flashes of the chaos and pandemonium, and above all the fear that must have been there on that day. It is as if sometimes I could still feel it, the horror, suspended in Time.

Camel Time

This past weekend in Madurai, the school that I teach at celebrated “Sports Day” at the local stadium. The students were divided up into the four historical Tamil Nadu dynasties: Chera, Chola, Nayalla, and Pandyas. Instead of what one would expect in a normal “Track and Field” day at an American school, for example, there was actually very little sports that day. Instead, it was more of a celebration of sports as the events themselves had been done throughout the week at school and this was more of an awards ceremony and exhibition of a few of the sports clubs and musical spectacles carrying the message of the importance of protecting the Earth and an awareness of Nature. Of the three clubs on display were the Yoga, Gymnastics, and Karate, again not something you might see highlighted in an American or European school.

The Seniors’ class representative gave an inaugural speech for the program and in it she said something, though perhaps oddly phrased, stuck in my mind. She said that some students may not be good in school, but are good in sports, so Sports Day is for them an important day. This stuck out because in a typical American high school, it is the athletes who nearly always have the spotlight and of which the majority of television shows and films will focus on if they are about high school. An excellent example of such a mini-series, and one which my sister worked on, is “Friday Night Lights” which actually attempts to balance small-town Texas football with the academics as the coach’s wife is also the principal, bringing the war of attention to the home front.

However, the balance is often not struck in reality, nor in the show. One of Socrates’ well-known dictums about education is the need to have both a healthy mind and body. This is something that I have always had a strong position on as well. I believe that if possible, the addition of physical conditioning is a crucial part of mental development. During all of my schooling and professional life I have been either active in swimming or water polo and was the swiming coach at the Antwerp International School as well.

While I was teaching at the Study Abroad program in Castiglion Fiorentino, I had been swimming at the local pool for as long as it was open. Set against the Tuscan hillside on one end and looking up at the 12th-century town of CF on the other, it was a swim workout that included quite a deal of backstroke because I never tired of either view under that Tuscan sun. However, the pool did close, and I was at a loss as to what to do. Often, the students and faculty would play ping pong in the off hours, which does work up a sweat at times, but was merely a band-aid to the situation.

So, I decided to start a yoga class. One of the classrooms was called the “Bishop’s Room” as it was a vaulted appendage to what had at one point been the Bishop’s apartment that the program now owned and used for faculty housing and classroom space. As such, I booked the Bishop’s Room and put out the notice. As is common with novelties, the effect can often wear off rather rapidly. With Yoga, it is quite amazing how many things can become suddenly so “important” and not make a class. However, I held the class at 7 a.m., so this was to be expected with college kids and I as actually more surprised with how many soon made up the core of the group on a near-daily basis. Beth, Katie, Barrett, Jamie, Dane, Whitney, Leyla, and Andrew became the base for the CF yoga club.

The most surprising of all, however, was Andrew. Andrew had been more than aloof in my “Portrait of A Student in Exile” class in which we were reading works dealing with either self-imposed or state-imposed exiles as well as writing about our own experiences of living in another country. Andrew would normally just be sullen, disengaged, or flat-out rude by either not showing up or falling asleep. Reality slightly hit when he failed his first paper, but he shrugged it off with an air of disinterest.

But, when Yoga classes started, I was more than surprised to see Andrew. His friend, Leyla, who was the exact opposite type of student, had convinced him to come. Within a short time, I could not believe the transformation that I saw in Andrew. From my Yoga Guru, Bekir, I inherited a tendency to philosophize during long poses, thereby distracting people from their discomfort, allowing them to actually settle into the pose nearly unconsciously. I could see Andrew taking it all in and he never missed a class, even if it had been a late night for everyone. Suddenly, he began to “show up”  in my class as well and ultimately became one of the strongest students.

It was the Camel that broke the student’s back though. As the winter came on in CF, I began to incorporate the Camel pose. Now, if you have ever done the Camel, your thighs probably just started aching from memory. Bekir would have us do lots and lots of Camels in late autumn, early winter because that is when we become more sedentary, more kapha, more lethargic, in a word, lazy. The Camel, then, is the ultimate antidote to this winter psychosomatic slumber. It is also the ultimate thigh workout.

At the end of the workout (had to be the end, because often you can barely walk after several sets), I had a specific DJ Cheb i Sabbah song that I would play, indicating that, yes, ladies and gentlemen, “It is Camel Time.” A collective groan would sweep across the room when that song would come on. However, Leyla and Andrew became the superstar Camels. They took it to a new level and it became a serious source of pride, and for those not attending the Yoga class, it was not uncommon to hear, “yeah, but you haven’t done the Camel.”

When Andrew and Leyla went back to Austin, I heard from them and they actually started classes with Bekir, being so proud of their Camels. It was a great feeling for me as a teacher that I had stumbled upon a way of getting to Andrew, because for me, the greatest failure I experience as a teacher is not reaching those that that seem to be unreachable. I was on the verge of giving up on Andrew, and it was the most unforeseen event that the Camel would be the key that finally unlocked that door. By the end of the semester, I could not believe the transformation that Andrew had undergone. I have learned to never underestimate the power of the Camel.

At the Table, Italian Style

While eating lunch today in Madurai, India, at my host, Pradeep’s home, I was reminded of an experience in Italy that I treasure with fondness. While living in the small hilltop Tuscan town of Castiglione Fiorentino, we befriended Marco, who owned La Bottega del Vino, a truly first-rate restaurant with Marco’s unsurpassable personal attention to hospitality and friendly evening banter, though often to the chagrin of his friend and partner who was stuck in the kitchen sweating over the hot stove the entire time and their wives who were busy serving people.

Marco was gregarious nearly to a fault, but genuinely loved to see people enjoy the food he offered at his trattoria. He was a craftsman of the old school and adherent to the slow-food movement in Italy, which involves sitting down and enjoying your food over time, quite in opposition to the rise of the American import of fast food into Europe.

When Marco found out that we would be in the town alone for Easter, which happened also to be on my birthday that year, he was sad and invited us to his home for an Easter dinner. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree always, but I’m no fool if the owner of my favorite small-town Tuscan restaurant invites me over for a home-cooked meal, I am not going to turn him down.

It was quite the event. I counted at least four generations there, though there was one older woman who might have been the fifth, but I am not certain. There were kids running around and several other of Marco’s family members, who were also no fools to turn down one of Marco’s banquets.

The thing that I remember most, more because it was an interesting custom more than anything else, was that we started with an enormous bowl of hard-boiled eggs. I mean several dozen at least. That was traditional for Easter and I am sure that we all had about four or five of them to inaugurate the meal.

After that, it was just one dish after another coming from Marco’s rather modest kitchen, but you would have never known it. Marco’s mother owned a grocery store on the edge of the town, just outside the city walls, and she always had good cheeses, wines, and produce, all of which was used in abundance to throw together this unforgettable meal.

So, after about five hours of eating and conviviality, Marco even brought out a birthday desert for me that he had made and I celebrated it with all of his family. It was a very special birthday event and a true testament to the hospitality that one can find in Italy.

My advice, if an Italian offers to bring you home for dinner with the family, it is most likely an offer that one should not refuse...and speaking of that, time to go down to dinner for one of Jacinthe’s home-cooked meals, Indian style. 

Statuesque Intrigue

Got statues and sculptures on the brain today, thinking about my upcoming trip to India and the first port of call, the Caves of Elephanta to see the large, rock-cut Hindu sculptures there.

We love statues as symbols, they give us something to hold onto, if only metaphorically. Hegel said that the statue of an altar was the metaphysical crux of a church as it was the presence of the deity, surrounded by the sacred space of the cathedral, surrounded by the congregation of paintings and stained-glass windows which view the statue.

I like statues out in the open air, al fresco, if you will, and Italy is full of them. However, upon reflecting about Italy today, three of them stick out in my mind that I would advise you to see, should you happen to be traveling to Italy any time soon. For me, these three statues capture the essence of what is appealing to me about Italy as a whole.

The first one is on the Campo di Fiori (the Field of Flowers) in Rome. This is a great piazza to people watch on, and for buying flowers, of course. However, the figure who presides over the Campo di Fiori is a bit ominous as it is none other than Giordano Bruno, who was burned in 1600 for heretical beliefs about the nature of Good and Evil. Bruno, as Stephen Dedalus says, "was badly burned" for his beliefs, something that seems so foreign to us now, but is actually quite recent in our history. Many a good man and woman have perished at the stake for their beliefs. What is interesting to me about Bruno is his idea of coincidentia oppositorum, or the concept that opposites attract. For Bruno, however, this is merely an illusion that there is actually something that can be opposite to another. Instead, there are merely two ends of a the same spectrum and ultimately like a wormhole in space and time, when the spectrum is bent, the opposite ends are actually the same. 


Something similar is described in the Phaedo of Plato when the friends of Socrates feel both pleasure and pain at the knowledge that Socrates is to die that day. Plato introduces the myth of Aesop that   pleasure and pain are like a saftey pin and are joined by a single joint and indeed are merely two ends of a single entity, beyond pleasure and pain. Well, when Bruno takes his idea to the logical conclusion, the granddaddy of opposites, Good and Evil, you can see where he got in a bit of tiff with the local Church, that being the Roman Catholic one... When people ask me about Italy, it is this strange attraction of opposites that comes to mind. Italy is one, gigantic living contradiction, but it works. I have a feeling that my trip to India will show me this contradiction exponentially.


So, Bruno's statue stands there mutely amongst the throngs of lascivious Roman men hunting unsuspecting American tourists for wallets and "romance" and reminds us of the odd chemistry that binds Italy together.


The second statue is Dante's but not in Florence,  rather in Verona. Verona's main attraction is the famous balcony from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, so it is almost ironic to find Dante's statue there. Go see the balcony for sure, it is worth the spectacle with graffiti messages all over it and the statue of poor Giulietta's breast rubbed endlessly for good luck and "romance". But, Dante serves as a reminder of the fact that Italy is the source of so much inspiration, such as the backdrop for the Elizabethean play. Italy has been part of the Grand Tour for artists, writers, and lovers long before the Grand Tour was even a concept, and much, much longer before Italy was even a country instead a bunch of territorial city-states at constant war with each other, centuries and milennia before Victor Emmanuel ever conceived of "Italia" as a country. So, visiting Verona, give ol' Dante a nod after you payed tribute to the "second-best" surrogate bard of Italy.


Finally, what would Italy be without Savonarola? "Who's that?" you ask. Well, he's the guy whose memorial that millions of tourists to Florence walk over every year without ever noticing. Next time you are in Florence, and you happen to be on the Piazza della Signoria, mistakenly looking at the fake David colossus (the real one's not there, but at the Academia), look down. In front of the ducal palace and next to the Uffizi is a commemorative disk that tells of the fate of the Monk on the Edge of Nervous Breakdown. Savonarola had his moment before he hit the flames. He preached a life of piety mixed with poverty, which worked for the über-rich Florentines, for a while, that is.


Savonarola got everyone worked up into a frenzy in Florence and had them stripping themselves of their Venus in Furs, paintings, rich linens, and most notably, their leather-bound books. Savonarola was the MC for many a public book-burning festivity to purge the city of its secular leanings. As I say, this worked for a while. Until the Florentines started missing their luxury goods. Then, as the fickle crowd often turns, they looked for something else to burn instead of the expensive wares and words. They found a crazy, gesticulating Monk from Ferrara that would do just fine, Savonarola himself. In the blink of an eye, the wealthy Florentines got religion in their material goods and decided to make a mark on the Piazza with Savonarola's ashes. Apparently, the crowd, which only a few months before had cheered on the Monk, was now charing him. The public burning was reportedly stopped several times so that the executioner could mix up Savonarola's charred remains, and then relighting the pyre to ensure that not a single earthly, material remain remained. If nothing else, those wascily Tuscans were thorough.


The statue of Savonarola, however, is in his birthplace, Ferrara. It is an eerie, eerie statue. With arms outstretched and a wild look of possession, you can almost hear the enchanted Monk delivering one of his (in)famous sermons that would wind up a crowd as frenzied as if they were listening to Paganini himself on the violin. I remember seeing this statue on a very foggy, autumn afternoon while visiting Ferrara from nearby Bologna, where I was living at the time. Ferrara is rumored to be a place of secret, dark magic, and seeing Savonarola's wild gaze stare out into the misty distance, I am willing to believe.

I'm Not Really From Texas

Part of my teaching position at L'Università di Bologna was a large (125 students) lecture course on British and American Literature. The set-up for the classroom was nothing like I had ever known, nor care to repeat. The students were on a lower level as there is a real "upstairs/downstairs" attitude in Italian universities and the students are much more obsequious to the professors than in America or Belgium. (OK, maybe that part of the class I enjoyed.) My students at The University of Texas at Austin had called me Dr. Rob, or sometimes even Rob. I don't even go by "Rob," so you can see the difference pretty clearly.

As a result of them being physically on a different level, I had to sit up on a podium accessed by stairs and had a railing around this small loft, with a table and a microphone on it that is like the ones that used to be in the airport to announce flights. If you have seen the famous "outing" episode with Ellen DeGeneres, you know what I mean.

So, there I would reign supreme above my minions, or so I thought. They apparently didn't understand a word I said for three weeks. And I had thought all of the giggles were coy little, flirtatious signals from the female students. Not quite.

About three weeks into the course, Nicole R., one of my favorite students approached me on my throne after class with a covey of giggling girls behind her, again, me thinking they were flirtatious Italians... She said, "Umm. Professore Fulton (respect at last!), some of the students asked me to speak with you about your class." I thought to myself, "Teaching awards? Already? Best class they had ever had? Americans really are smart!"

As I was rehearsing my acceptance speech in my mind, some of the other giggling girls goaded Nicole on in Italian. At that point, I had not learned enough Italian, so in my head I heard, "Go on Nicole, tell him how brilliant his lectures are, that he should replace Eco himself..." and so on.

So, Nicole approaches me further with her polished British accent that she was quite proud of as the other students had much more pronounced Italian accents.

"Umm. Professore Fulton (never gets old), there seems to be a problem with your class lectures."

Problem? What, they're not long enough? Was it my hair? (still had some then, and a sporty "European Professor" goatee). Were they swooning too much to listen.

"Oh, okay, what seems to be the problem?"

"Well, Sir (chaa-ching), it's your accent..."

My accent? Too suave? Too debonaire? Too, too?

"What do you mean, Nicole? Is there a problem with my accent."

"Ummm...yes Sir, nobody can understand your heavy Texas accent."

Thump. That was my Ego that fell.

Well, if you have ever heard me speak, you will know that I have absolutely NO ACCENT, in fact, most people don't know where I am from when I speak.

So, I replied, "Ahh....I see, my Texas accent. Okay, thanks, Nicole, I will be sure to address that."

Nicole turned, related the dialog to the others in Italian, and there was much laughter, mirth, pointing and giggling, more laughter, tears, lots more laughter. Finally, I just left the room because it became unbearable.

The next class I ascended my royal loft and thumped on the microphone and addressed the collective bated breath of the class.

"Apparently, there seems to be something wrong with my Texas accent and you are having trouble understanding me," I said quite slowly and deliberately, sans any trace of an accent.

Lots of hugging and patting on the back, hail Mary's and processions took place. Nicole was hoisted on the shoulders of her peers and general merriment ruled for the next twenty minutes or so. When the ruckus had subsided, I said,

"Eff ayya spoak in a reyaal texssassh accsent, y'all wudn't unnerstan a gaosh dern thang ayya was a'sayin."

Dead silence, or at least as silent as Italian students could be. You could have heard a penne drop. (in my mind, that joke will never get old).

I resumed my lectures in my "Canadian Newscaster" normal speaking voice and there were no more discussions about Texas accents in the class.

That was the end of the lesson on assumptions for the day.