Boys will be boys!

 One of my favorite childhood stories involved an Easter outing with my Grandmother when we lived in Italy. She had come to stay with us for a couple of weeks in the Spring of 1971 or 1972… it gets hazy exactly which. It was an exciting time. I think it was the one of the few times anyone in our extended family came to visit us anywhere, much less when we lived overseas.

At some point we all (except the girls) bundled up, and took a train to Rome. We stayed there a couple days, right downtown, in the middle of a national garbage strike, and toured the city. It was great! The train ride was fun, (We caught it in Venice), and of course seeing the Colosseum, St Peters, Trevi fountain, and all the art works and statues.

Fast forward (or rewind) to Easter. We got dressed up and took Grandma on a picnic. The weather was terrific; warm with blue skies. Somewhere Dad found a field on the top of a hill overlooking a highway. we laid out chairs and a blanket and had a nice picnic lunch near a stand of trees. The adults sat around talking and us kids set off to explore and play.

Found out the slope down to the road below was really steep, and the road below fairly close. Too close. To this day I am sure it was Dave’s idea (How could it be mine?), but we decided to see if we could throw rocks that landed on the road below. There was a lot of traffic whizzing by, and it was pretty noisy as they went by. We threw a bunch. Suddenly one car puts on his brakes and slows down as he passed us. We ran as fast as we could back through the trees in hopes he hadn’t seen where the rocks came from.

No such luck. A short time later a car came up the dirt road to where we were parked and a VERY irate Italian man started waving his arms around and pointing to the cracked windshield. Despite the language barrier (he knew more English than my parents knew Italian), it became clear what had happened and we fessed up.

Man, what a tanning we got that day! I’m pretty sure Dad paid for a new windshield, but was more angry that we would do something so dumb. I thought about that a lot as a parent; things you wouldn’t think sane individuals would try often seem to be great ideas at the time. Thank goodness they don’t happen too often.