150 years ago Italy was unified to be the boot it is today. A simplified story of it is that a bunch of guys with silly hats walked from the south of Italy to the north saying “hey wanna be a unified country?”. Some of them had to spit off and swim to Sardinia, but eventually the great country you see today is due to their persuasive abilities and long legs. As a way to commemorate these soldiers of unity, old men dressed in the funny hats carrying flags walk up the street and meet in the main piazza. While there they create a little border for the speaker and a wreath. Outside of the border are other old men who usually would be standing around gossiping anyway. This event just brought more gossip to a central location. As the ceremony took place I noticed that not a single policeman or soldier was dressed in the same garb. Hats would be different, jackets, gloves, shoes, pants, pins and buttons. I am not saying they just went to the thrift store to find whatever they could, but I wouldn’t be surprised either. A couple people were called up to speak in front of the amassed crowd of geezers. Since I didn’t understand what he was saying I couldn’t help but to picture one of the guys accepting an Oscar during his speech. “This is so unexpected, it wasn’t me who actually unified Italy but I live here so I would like to thank my mom and dad and Billy(pointing to someone in the crowd) for believing in me.” Then the music starts to get loud as the sign to get off stage. The whole event took maybe 10 minutes from start to finish. When it was done the old men stayed right where they were and kept gossiping like nothing had happened.
Moral of the story, don’t get in the middle of an old man and his daily news…
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