I don’t just call her Aryan Girl because she has perfectly blonde curls and her mother’s stunning blue eyes, and an angelic face.
She also has the demeanour of a little rule-following Nazi with impeccable memory. And some of the rules she knows I have no idea where she learnt them. Especially considering she is two years old.
We’re off to get pastries for her newly five year old sister and it’s just me and her in the car. It’s just up the road so I sat her in the passenger seat. As we get to the stop sign up the road, I see no cars either side, it is a little sleepy village after all, so I gently roll through it…
“DADDY! THAT WAS A RED STOP SIGN AND YOU JUST WENT THROUGH IT!”
The look of outraged accusation in her angelic face was fulminating. It couldn’t have been worse had I been a curly haired and hooked nosed Jew trying to pass a border post out of the ghetto.
After the initial shock of thinking how the hell does she know about stop signs and wondering if perhaps she’s learned to read by herself, I couldn’t help but laugh as we went down the hill.
“Daddy, you PIGLET!” That’s her way of showing disapproval without being too harsh, a half smile on her face. As we roll up to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill before the village, and I’m still laughing, I do the exact same thing and roll through it…
“DADDY! YOU JUST DID IT AGAIN!”
It’s unconceivable! I obviously need to be put up against a wall in front of a firing squad.
I can’t fault her at all, after all she’s absolutely right, and I tell her so. We get to the piazza where the bar is with the pastries and there is a squad car of carabinieri checking cars. I park literally next to their squad car. They know me and I know them, but I still have a two year old in the passenger seat, despite the seat belt and all. I fully expect I will now be rightfully crucified for my multiple crimes. And I fully expect my little Nazi would make uncle Adolf proud by telling the gendarmerie what a reckless felon I am.
The carabinieri carefully pretend to not have seen me. Probably just as well, if it were up to Aryan Girl I should probably have been whipped in the town square as an example to other vicious criminals.
You can see why the Germans always thought the Italians were an undisciplined bunch of too human catastrophists though.
I had best get myself in shape fast.
Maybe learn a few German commands.
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
