Zen Revenge & Other Things

I've probably never mentioned that the family that lives above us is extremely loud and annoying. Since we are just worthless American students and the ceiling is 12 feet high, poking at it with a broom like Erin and I used to do in the Vistas last year is not an option. Incased in a thick cloud of midterm studying, over the past couple days I have found myself stewing more and more each second, about to lose my mind over every marble dropped upstaris. So I decided to get revenge the only way I could: by imprisioning the father of said family in a hateful miserable life, literarily speaking. I don't know much about Italian families so I had to use an American family dynamic but I assure you irresponsible parents and demon children upstairs this is about you.

If you need a distraction/laugh enjoy my very shittily written catharsis.


There had been a time when Bill and his wife had been in love. When they were young and new to each other there had been smiles from across the room, and witty debates over paint color and sex on the kitchen floor. Delving into each other’s pasts and wielding hopes with which they begun melding a future, they had shared secrets and dreams. Now it seemed all they shared were children. Three of them. Sticky, screaming little demons who dropped things on the floor and ran around in circles shrieking. Bill resented the fact that since their introduction he was not allowed to talk about himself anymore, only about the children. He was not allowed to eat at a restaurant without a kids menu, or take a little stroll on his way back from work instead of rushing straight home with more diapers. It’s true they were HIS children but still, it certainly had not been his idea to have them. To turn his cozy well furnished little apartment into the monkey exhibit at a zoo and his wife into a dumpy baby factory who talked of little else.
Bill tried to ignore the children as much as possible. He trudged up the stairs to his first floor apartment and dropping the diapers by the door, settled into his chair with the morning’s paper. Only to find that his daughter Jamie had apparently needed to make a ransom note as her preschool homework and the days headlines could only be read after a game of hangman to fill in the blocks left by her safety scissors. Halfway through an article he found an blue eye staring at him and he lifted the paper to find three year old Tommy giggling in front of him with a green mouth most likely from the magic marker in his pudgy left hand. “
“Do you mind sport? Daddy’s trying to read the paper here.” He went back to his article.
“Daaaadddyyyy”
“What Tommy?” asked Bill gruffly
“Will you play with me?”
“Not right now son. Why don’t you go play with the baby. And keep that damn marker away from your mouth. You’d think there’s nothing to eat in this house with you always chewing on makers…..Weeendyyyy….. Tommy’s got a green mouth again. You want to do something about that?”
“I’m a little busy Bill.” Came a terse response from the steaming kitchen. Angela started crying from her bedroom. “Billl….”
“What Wendy?”
“You want to get her so I can take the meatloaf out of the oven?”
“Meatloaf again?” muttered Bill with disdain “You’d think we were some damn poor people. No wonder the kid is eating crayons.”
Somewhere in the apartment Tommy turned his tin of marbles upside down and they spilled out onto the tile like shattering glass. Angela cried louder and started shaking the crib to get out causing it to bump against the wall. Waaaaaaa thunk, waaaaa thunk waaaaa thunk
Bill stared at the front door and listened to the beeping of the timer in the kitchen, the marbles being dropped back into their tin one by one, the pounding of the crib against the wall. He stared long and hard at the front door and then he threw the paper down and went to take care of Angela.


Not my best writing but now when I hear what must be elephant sized people parading around upstairs I just think of poor unhappy Wendy and Bill and I feel better :)

I finally got over the strange and inconvient illness that ruined my weekend. Now I'm spending my time cramming and paper writing over coffee and smoothies in the loft of a nearby bar where in my first weeks in Florence, I took the strangest and most repulisve shots ever. The lady asks sometimes if I want rum in my smoothie and while I think that really alcohol can only help when reviewing ethics, I have so far refrained.

Two midterms down, three to go. and then a wonderful week on the beaches of Santorini. Excited for a break from creepy Italian men, pee smelling streets, exasperating neighbors and (hopefully) the rain!