When I was 7, my family took a trip to Venice.
The floating city.
We went on a gondola ride. They’re not cheap. In fact, in financial terms it’s similar to setting fire to a Great Dane made fully of euros.
When parents drop that kind of cash on a culturally enriching experience for their children, there’s a moment. They grab your shoulders, look deep into your eyes with the intensity of a hostage negotiator and silently urge you,
“You’re about to create a core memory here.
In 30 years, when a therapist asks you what your childhood was like, you say,
‘I rode in GONDOLAS.
IN VENICE.
THAT’S WHAT IT WAS LIKE.’”
i.e. Remember this, or else.
Trouble is, you can’t always control the memories you’re going to make.
By luck of the draw, we ended up with the one gondolier who’d somehow learned that English expletives were just a sort of casual emphasis, to be dropped in anywhere and everywhere.
And now, decades later, that curated core memory — lapping canals, wet limestone, fading pastel grandeur, slow rhythmic oars in the water — is forever merged with the sound of a young moustachioed Italian in a bateau shirt and a neckerchief screaming,
“An’ this is the house of FUCKING MARCO POLO!
You got the son of a bitch Piazza San Marco over there!
You gonna have some fucking spaghetti tonight, bambini?
You havin’ a special vacation, you beautiful little motherfuckers?!
Ahhh, bellissima!”
I think about it most weeks.
So. That’s not a biography. But. Now you know something about me.
Oh also, sidenote: You want to be careful about trying to make your kids cultured. Below is what happens when you play a four-year-old too much Leonard Cohen.