“No!” my Italian ‘mama’ shouts at me, albeit very kindly, as I wander into the kitchen without shoes or socks.
“You…” and she doesn’t know the word so she points at her feet.
I instinctively put my hand over my mouth as my eyes widen.
“Mi dispiace, Vera! Mi dispiace!”
I scurry back to my room to quickly slide on the €10 slippers I bought at the grocery store. Every time I look at them I am a little taken aback. They aren’t aesthetically pleasing by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I would go so far as to say they are ugly — they remind me of something my great-grandmother would wear back in the old country. Regardless, my grayish-pink slippers were a far better option than the Hello Kitty and Betty Boop slippers hanging further down the aisle. The grocery store is, apparently, not known for its slipper selection. But, then again, they don’t exactly have a Payless on every Florentine street.
I was prepared for many things in coming to Italy. I had been warned the Italians liked to do things ‘their way’ and that tradition often took precedence over efficiency. This has certainly proven to be true.
But there was one thing I was not prepared for — the whole country (or at least the whole city of Florence) has an aversion to bare feet!
In my quest for the perfect slippers, I even came across a portable plastic foot tray of sorts. This tray folds to be about a foot and a half long, eight inches wide and one inch thick and then unfolds into a small, circular plastic tray on which users can stand to avoid touching the ground in public places.
But the Italians have good reason to feel skeptical about touching anything with their bare feet. Humans — with their animals, garbage and diseases — are dirty. And old cities such as Florence have been accumulating human filth for at least a thousand years. Even today, Italians bring their animals to ‘do their business’ in the busy city streets and sidewalks of Florence. The best part? They don’t clean it up. Ever. (I was unfortunate enough to experience the adverse effects of not paying attention while walking just last night.) Moreover, it has yet to rain while I have been in Italy, but there are puddles of…liquids…both big and small on nearly every street.
I hurry back to the kitchen with my slippers on my feet. I begin to wonder whose bare feet (besides my own) last touched this floor.
“Some other foolish American must have…”
But the smell of homemade lasagna is so wonderfully overwhelming that I soon lose my train of thought and I forget I’m even wearing slippers.
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