A False Imagination

I left to get away. From my school, my parents, and the dull normalcy of my home—all of which I imagined I would easily exchange, at least for a semester, for a life in Rome. I would live in a terra cotta colored school, complete with a courtyard, marble stairs, and a garden. I would be able to speak Italian and talk with a romantic lilt. I’d pick up that Italian cool, the way girls could wrap scarves around their necks for a sense of effortless chic and stand with their chins tilted slightly upward for that don’t mess with me attitude that was somehow alluring.

“Oh, Italy!” others would cry when I told them where I’d be heading. “You’re so lucky. I wish I could be you.” Be me—someone would want to be me, sixteen and stuck in high school? All because I would get to live in Rome? I’m sure they too envisioned sunny afternoons spent wandering under orange trees, charming men on Vespas, and dinners with too much pasta and wine. It’s what they fondly remembered from their trips—the parts that seemed too perfect, too pleasantly foreign to ever exist in America. They didn’t think about all those other things, the lines for the tourist sites or sly waiters who would try to cheat them of a few euros. Why would you when it didn’t fit with your imagined dream of Italy?

I went off with that dream. I knew everything wouldn’t be perfect, but I thought it would have to be better. It was Italy, after all. But I found that the marble steps were smaller than I thought and the courtyard, though charming to look at, made the school too cold in February. My vision of riding on the back of a Vespa with an Italian boy was never realized, as the few who did own them either had girlfriends or cracked crude sex jokes more often than is ever amusing. I didn’t find too many of those “cool” Italians, but the ones I did meet held their chins up high to ignore all but their friends, who were, of course, never American.

But now, when I tell people I spent a semester in Rome they always say, “Wow, that must have been amazing!” I don’t tell them about all the mediocre parts but usually just say that “Yes, it was great.” After all, who wants to hear that living in Italy for five months was not like being in paradise but was just okay?