23
Yesterday afternoon I went to the soccer game with Luca Spaghetti and his friends. We
were there to watch Lazio play. There are two soccer teams in Rome—Lazio and Roma. The
rivalry between the teams and their fans is immense, and can divide otherwise happy families
and peaceful neighborhoods into civil war zones. It’s important that you choose early in life
whether you are a Lazio fan or a Roma fan, because this will determine, to a large part, whom
you hang out with every Sunday afternoon for the rest of time.
Luca has a group of about ten close friends who all love each other like brothers. Except
that half of them are Lazio fans and half of them are Roma fans. They can’t really help it; they
were all born into families where the loyalty was already established. Luca’s grandfather (who
I hope is known as Nonno Spaghetti) gave him his first sky-blue Lazio jersey when the boy
was just a toddler. Luca, likewise, will be a Lazio fan until he dies.
“We can change our wives,” he said. “We can change our jobs, our nationalities and even
our religions, but we can never change our team.”
By the way, the word for “fan” in Italian is tifoso. Derived from the word for typhus. In other
words—one who is mightily fevered.
My first soccer game with Luca Spaghetti was, for me, a delirious banquet of Italian lan-
guage. I learned all sorts of new and interesting words in that stadium which they don’t teach
you in school. There was an old man sitting behind me, stringing together such a gorgeous
flower-chain of curses as he screamed down at the players on the field. I don’t know all that
much about soccer, but I sure didn’t waste any time asking Luca inane questions about what
was going on in the game. All I kept demanding was, “Luca, what did the guy behind me just
say? What does cafone mean?” And Luca—never taking his eyes from the field—would reply,
“Asshole. It means asshole.”
I would write it down. Then shut my eyes and listen to some more of the old man’s rant,
which went something like:
Dai, dai, dai, Albertini, dai... va bene, va bene, ragazzo mio, perfetto, bravo, bravo...
Dai! Dai! Via! Via! Nella porta! Eccola, eccola, eccola, mio bravo ragazzo, caro mio, eccola,