Summer 2024 bye bye, between tales of our ‘heroic’ deeds on holiday and the desperation of those who will have to listen to them…
I was rereading for the umpteenth time Works by the most damned and brilliant Italian writer of the post-war period, Trevisan (who committed suicide a few years ago). Trevisan’s boldness in portraying reality (especially in the workplace) with mocking precision, madness and even a pinch of irony, gave me the opportunity to observe people in their dialogues and disturbances with his cynicism. So, in the suspended situation of the summer months, I decided to listen to the chatter of vacationers, focusing especially on couples with children.
What I’m about to tell you is nothing new because we’ve all ended up in these little theaters.
It doesn’t matter where, what matters is finding moments of aggregation. The ideal situations are beaches. Everyone dreams of the long-awaited vacation after a year of work, to “switch off” as they say, thinking about themselves and their health. But then, unable to live in suspended time, they desperately search for a lifeline, a landing place that can replace the daily routine, a great self-absolving alibi. And so, the couple we have targeted immediately makes friends with the couple next door thanks to their children who enjoy throwing sand. The game is done, the introductions have taken place, the pact has been signed. From here begins the most classic repertoire full of fun truisms! We begin with the analysis of the place, worthy of a Lonely Planet guide, where the couples find themselves. It seems like listening to long-term adventurers, they already know everything, habits, customs, slang, two days were enough and they are already the masters of the place. They tell us about its hidden corners, they can give advice, I even heard a ‘let’s not tell too many people, I don’t want too many tourists to come’.
There is no place, typical product, producer, that is not discussed in an expert manner, when perhaps in their habits these couples frequent restaurants with karaoke and gorge themselves in shopping malls. Here instead they transform, they become couples of refined tasters, they eat roots because they are “local”, they drink local wine because it is “made here like it used to be”, but then in the end they always get melancholy about “how we eat at home”. After a few tears, an invitation to have dinner together that same evening in a place “that we know” is immediately given. Another funny thing to pay attention to, each couple has its own official speaker who always speaks in the plural obsessively using the “we”, “we like it here”, “we like things done this way”.
Then, between one topic and another, the path that leads to maximum complicity between couples: “Where are you from?”. If by a strange game of coincidence the cities are close then the liberating collective laughter and amazement breaks out. At that point we move on to their respective professions, a guaranteed laugh. So the manager with his hairy legs and flowered costume shows off his role by inundating us with his professional performances, the quality control officer gets lost in details that only he understands, the employee blathers on about the essentiality of her role without which the company would go nowhere. The details with which these couples open up to each other are striking and disturbing, they have known each other for a few minutes and know everything about each other, phone numbers have already been exchanged and a new WhatsApp group is already infesting the airwaves. An instant later the invitation to spend a few days in their residences is sent out, “come whenever you want, we will gladly host you!”.
We’ll spare you the chapter on children, the debate ranges from diapers to university, children are regularly portrayed as capricious but brilliant, a genius that teachers often fail to understand and who, for this reason, are branded as incompetent and the school as a whole as a failure.
At this point I smile to myself because Sorrentino’s extraordinary monologue comes to mind on school (in the Italian series Call My Agent) which ends with a liberating “God, take care of the parents’ education”.
The holidays are ending, we will finally be able to tell the “heroic” deeds in our offices of these weeks to the desperation of those who will have to sit there and listen, in front of a coffee, and pretend to be interested.
And I know that Trevisan – who has known the world of work very well, having always worked to support himself as an misunderstood writer – will be there with his mocking grin having a laugh.
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