Latin Jealousy

Continuting from the last post I would like to confirm the existence of yet another stereotype. One of the things that really makes me step back and realise that I live in a different country is when I experience the Latin Jealousy. In my experience these people are loud, proud and unashamedly jealous. Let's look at some examples:

Take E's friend Giorgio. Giorgio runs a fruit and vegetable stall at a market and usually provides E's pizzeria with produce. Sometimes E is not able to get hold of Giorgio for some last minute mushrooms (or other vegetable emergency) and so buys from another supplier instead. It's guaranteed that that very same night Giorgio will get wind of the betrayal, rock up at the pizzeria, start berating E and examining the traitorous mushrooms at close quarters. At this point Giorgio's tirade gets too fast for me to pick up everything, but I can usually catch a 'fanno schifo' (they're gross) and a few other derogatory comments before Giorgio storms off home. It'll probably be the next afternoon before he'll talk to E again. A few nights ago he turned up at the pizzeria in a rage because he'd argued with his girlfriend. His girlfriend's mum had served him some tomatoes which he deemed disgsting (ie, not from him) and he'd refused to eat them. His girlfriend was mortified, they argued and he stormed off.

Or look at the doctor who performed my operation. I once had a student of mine dress my leg because she thought it looked infected and I was between hospital appointments (she was actually a doctor by the way, and she dressed my leg at her hospital). Next hospital visit I brought up the incident, thinking my doc'd be pleased that I'd taken the initiative. Oh no. On the contrary he scolded me for 10 minutes like a naughty schoolchild around the theme of 'I am the only doctor allowed to touch your leg' and began a long rant about non-orthopedic doctors being overly paranoid about infections. Turns out that between hospital visits he'd much rather my boyfriend, who makes pizza for a living, treats my leg than another doctor. Oh, and I was strictly forbidden to see a doctor in England too. Maybe in case they accidentally amputated my leg or something. Instead my friend the mortgage adviser was roped in to tend to the cage.

Finally my boyfriend E, though not strictly 'Latin', nevertheless has enough Eastern-European blood and Italian influence running through him to make him as jealous as the rest of 'em. I am not allowed to eat pizza that is not from his pizzeria. "But what if I'm hungry and there's nowhere else to buy food? I won't be eating it for enjoyment. It'll probably be disgusting" I try. I get a dark look in return "I don't think you should try it". Once I bought a spinach and ricotta roll, which admittedly was from a pizzeria, but I assure you did not even vaguely resemble pizza. I couldn't eat it all and took it to E to offer him some. As it turns out however, this is definitely categorised under pizza product. His sulk lasted a good few hours and I learnt that to prevent further 'episodes' I was going to have to be a bit cautious in the future. Now I am constantly checking my receipts and going over my fabrications in my head ('What did I have for lunch? Why, I had pasta al pomodoro'). I'm sure I'll get caught out one day, but until then I'd prefer to avoid the big green-eyed Italian monster.