Driving in Italy, pt. 2

It's late October, and the first of the holidays is upon us: Halloween. Most people will dress up, consume candy, maybe go to a haunted house party. My approach is a bit different: I like to put on a small car and pretend I'm Italian.

The best part is all the fear and terror are still there. You know you're doing it right when Karen starts hyperventilating. But more important is the Italian driving ethos. You see, the Italians can smell fear. Driving with them is like those animal training shows: you are the alpha dog or someone's going to eat your slippers and soil your rug, in an automotive sense. Whatever that means.

So establishing control is important. But so is folding in your mirrors. Along the coast, some stretches are literally so narrow that cars can't get past each other any other way. Of course, those are also the stretches where three peds, two scooters and a tour bus magically appear, the rules of physics bend to the same fluctuations that give rise to Italian time, and multiple bodies simultaneously occupy a single point in the space-time continuum.

Is it fun? Absolutely! Though maybe not so much for Karen...