Annual unpaid taxes in Italy equal 275 billion euro a year, which roughly amounts to the size of Portugal’s entire economy. But if you want to know what Italians are doing with the money they scrape off the top of the government’s cream pie, take a weekend shuttle to the place where nothing’s underground. My last visit to what Italians call un ipermercato occurred after nearly a week of battling the flu. Going was probably my worst personal decision since the beginning of 2010-and Filippo and I were only in the grocery section. Picture 7,000 Saturday shoppers milling around the dairy section, all after the same squashed rectangle of Nonno-brand stracchino cheese. It is what Italians dine on during hospital stays and seemed in particularly high demand that day, which made me imagine that I was not the only one feeling a bit under the weather.
Shop with an Italian and you will discover loads of ways to boost your personal health, as you’re aisle-wandering will include ‘everyone-knows-this-but-you’ declarations on what foods you’re supposed to fill your cart with when low on health-linked points. For those of you able to capire le cose al volo with the soaring speed of flight, I’ll simplify it: be prepared to eat nothing but riso in bianco. Anything but white rice will bring you nothing but heartache, as coffee destroys the digestive tract and chocolate inflames the throat and causes swelling of all things besides a woman’s hips. And in a culture where over-the-counter drugs are not traditionally sold at grocery stores, glycerin suppositories supposedly cure all evils.
Whether or not that is really accurate, what I can say is that one should never go to un ipermercato unless truly in forma, for tip-top shape is what you need to stand a chance against the 17 warrior-pensioners who simultaneously infiltrate themselves into various check-out lines with the spot-on precision of a detached Roman battalion. I am quite sure that their main objective is not actually the purchase of foodstuffs; theirs is a race to see who can make it first to a phantom place where none are actually going. Stand like a toy soldier, if you’d like to try it, your feet firmly planted. The stance will hardly stand a chance against their logic: they have one less item in their basket than you do, which in pensionato mentality means ‘Move over, Signora, we’ve got the longest life expectancy in the world.’ Their inch-by-inch, elbow-by-elbow plan of attack proves foolproof until someone (never me) decides to mortificare the culprit senior by sending her back at least three squares on the race to nowhere.
In hopes of avoiding most of the battaglione, Filippo suggested we go through the self-checkout section and scan the entirety of our own groceries before loading them into the cart. Ci stavo. I found myself in complete agreement. Hypnotized by what Filippo calls the ‘frequent beep syndrome’ ipermercato checkers are, in fact, the only ones in the store who are not at all hyper. And unless you speak a language made with lines instead of words, they really have no use for you. Barcode is their main form of communication. So while you may sense they’d prefer customers to whiz out of their eyesight with lightening speed, I’ve never known anyone who’s been able to prove it, for no witness has ever actually seen checkers attempt to facilitate the purchasing process. Beep-n-shove pretty much covers it. Only upon expressed request will you be tossed two five-cent shoppers made from plastic that is so ‘ecologically friendly’ its biodegradable atoms start decomposing before you reach the parking lot. Nervous and novice, despite years of practice, you begrudgingly bag your own worried bags with all the wrong combinations of the frozen and the fragile and then get huffed at for not providing 67 cents worth of exact change. Not a register in the place has more than half a euro change at any given time.
The sweet beep of self-hypnosis is so much simpler, if you can get over the sweating-through-customs feeling I always experience when passing through it. ‘I expect a bearded border official and his german shepherd to appear out of nowhere and make us pay duty on our canned goods.’ I admitted.
‘That’s because you feel guilty about everything.’
‘Why is self-checkout the only place Italians actually apply the honor system?’
Filippo smiled. ‘We feel too serious about food to steal it.’
‘I think that Saturday at the ipermercato will tell you everything you need to know about the Italian culture.’
He shrugged. ‘The same is true in any country. What is there about American culture that cannot be seen at Wal-Mart?’
Ouch. ‘How depressing. Are you trying to make my fever rise again?’
‘No. I’m just giving you a taste of your own medicine.’
I don’t want medicine. I want cioccolata. Nothing but sweet, throat-inflaming chocolate, I swear.
