It’s hard to say what my expectations were when I set out for Italy. Looking back now, I guess I was expecting the quintessential Italy trip: daily walks on cobblestone streets, gelato slowly melting in the warm glow of the sun, lounging on a green grassy hill while overlooking the Tuscan landscape and eating a picnic of various meats, cheeses and bread … basically everything you see in the movies.
We were somewhere around Coolidge on the top shelf of some high desert oven rack when my wife Robyn said that the hotel we’re going to serves complimentary cocktails from 5 to 6:30.
Back in the old days (I’m talking about fifth grade) on April Fools, my prank was “The Prank” of all pranksters. During break, I would steal my friends’ brown sack lunches from their colorful cubbies.
About this time last year, I was grumbling over the mass e-mails from the School of Humanities about graduation. “I’m not ready to think about gowns and caps and announcements!” I said and skimmed – then deleted – all of those e-mails. “I’ll read them next year,” I told myself.
For every grandparent with an iPhone, there are countless others who only know of Apple as a type of pie filling. My maternal grandparents have little in common, aside from a European ancestry and their current status as members of the octogenarian club. My grandmother is a hairdresser, a wonderful baker and a devout Lutheran, while my grandfather is a retired engineer who keeps to himself, speaks a handful of languages and stays up-to-date with Rush Limbaugh.
