My brother has been married to a German lady for almost a decade now.

At the beginning of the relationship, my brother was very reluctant to let her come to visit us. But after a year of being together on their own (and a lot of pressure from our parents), she was finally allowed to visit us.

According to my brother, there were two incidents during the visit that had her almost run to the hills.

The first was actually during the first day: we were having dinner and making conversation, at some point, voices were raised because I was lamenting something or other about school, and mom was trying to advise me fruitlessly, but it wasn’t anything noteworthy.

My brother’s girlfriend took him aside later that day and asked if my mom and dad, and I were having big issues. My brother was very confused; it took him several minutes to understand her thought process: she was used to silent family meals, and since she didn’t understand Italian, she was under the impression there had been an actual argument, rather than a mild, fleeting spat between my teen self and mom.

The second incident involved my dad: one of his aunts had been, to make a long story short, both old enough to have been a young woman during WW2, and a collaborationist who never recovered from the death of her first love, a Nazi soldier who very much was a true believer. She had taught my dad and his siblings a love song that was also a marching song, among other things that thankfully did not stick.

On the fourth day of my brother’s GF staying over, at dinner, my dad had the bright idea of both talking extensively about this (in history’s most broken English) and belting out a rendition of that song before anyone could stop him.

Said song being “Erika”. The most popular marching song used by the Nazis.

And he knew the lyrics by heart.

It took A LOT of explaining on my brother’s part to her before she fully understood that it was just a very unfortunate attempt at connection.

My younger brother is legendary in his tendency to always “plan ahead”, but in the most anxiety-inducing way possible. He literally never has enjoyed any joyful occasion ever because he was already thinking of the clean-up, and his fragile mind has survived things like the Covid Pandemic or the company he worked at going under only through sheer thinking of the “after”.

My family and I hoped that marrying would change his behaviour for the better, but instead, my brother’s strangeness infected his wife.

How bad did it get? They had a daughter. I came to visit them a week after she was born, and, as I held her in my arms, my brother started this conversation.

Brother: “She’s cute, isn’t she? Pity we don’t know how to punish her already.”

Me: “What? What does that have to do with anything?”

Brother: “[Wife] and I are still discussing how we will punish her when she starts to misbehave, I’m in favour of ti–”

Me: “Whoa whoa [Brother], slow down, she’s barely a week old and you and [Wife] are already thinking of *punishment*?”

Wife: “It’s only a year away, you do know that, right?”

Me: “It’s a whole year of [Daughter] being a baby! Why would you waste it thinking about how to stop her misbehaviour?!”

Brother: “But it’s a year!”

By that point, the daughter was made upset by our loud arguing, and our circular conversation had to be cut short. The daughter is four now, and the parents are already looking for dysgraphia and dyslexia experts because she doesn’t draw letters and because she has perfectly normal trouble sounding out words on picture books, and any time she tries to ask for something, anything, they try to list out all other options she’s missing out on by making that choice. I would not wish her existence on my worst enemy.

I’m a secretary at a notary’s studio. One of the duties I’m called upon to do is to get the clients’ IDs and check them when they come over. The only IDs accepted are either actual ID cards and passports.

One day, an older man comes to the studio to ask for a deed appointment, I ask him for an ID… and he produces a club’s membership card.

Me: “Sir, this is not a valid ID. May I have your ID card?”

Man: “Nah, it’ll be fine.”

Me: “Sir, this is not up to me. Part of my job is to check for a legally valid ID before you access the notary.”

Man: “Well, my name and surname are on the card. Plus, my ID has an old photo; you wouldn’t recognize me if I used that.”

Me: “That does not matter: what matters here is that this membership card is legally worthless, and that to access the notary, you need to show a proper ID.”

Man: “What do you know, little boy? Just let me in.”

Me: “Sorry, sir. You will have to retrieve your ID to enter.”

He grumbled and scoffed. Then, he tried to stare me down. Finally, he pulled out his ID card from his coat pocket, at which point I could check it and let him in. 

I have no idea why he was so insistent on using a club’s membership card when all he had to do was put his hands in a coat pocket instead of a trouser pocket.

I have set up a stall at the Christmas Market within the Spedale degli Innocenti’s courtyard, ready to sell my rust-print cloths, which are both unique and fairly expensive. While I’m busy showing off a tablecloth to a customer, I hear my partner shout.

Partner: “No! Go away! Bad dog!”

I turn around and see him waving his “anti-theft staff” around menacingly, placing himself between the napkins pile and a yapping Maltese dog lunging toward them. The dog’s owner is busy having a call.

Me: “Hey there. Can you please rein in the dog before he smacks my things down?”

The owner gasps as she snatches her dog up and holds it away from our sight.

Woman: “How dare you?! She just wanted to say hello!”

Partner: “It was trying to say ‘hello’ by ripping all these cloths to shreds. I had to react.”

Woman: “Well, it’s not like they’re worth much, anyway.” *Points at a napkin* “How much is this worth? I bet I could buy this all with pocket change.”

Me: “The napkins? 40€ each, and the tablecloths are worth 200€. Do you know why? I make these personally with rust powder and ash. They’re unique. They are not puppy pads.”

The woman blushed and ran away without much incident. Still, loose and untrained dogs shouldn’t be allowed out!

Tourist: “Where do we take the bus?”

Me: “Which bus are you looking for?”

Tourist: “The one that goes to our hotel.”

My colleagues and I bought a crystal ball for exactly this reason.