How things work

I know I'm a little all over the place this week, but I'm in a storytelling mood. This is a true tale. Two friends, a graphic designer from the north of Europe whom I will call GD and her husband an Italian lawyer whom I will call L, have bought a small attic apartment overlooking a rare sight in Milan – a nice green park. There’s a small balcony where on warm nights GD and L can have dinner or a bottle of wine and look out onto the green space that reminds GD so much of her homeland and makes living in Milan a little more bearable. One day GD and L open the shutters to find that a monstrous cell phone tower has been installed overnight, blocking their view of the park and making sitting out on the balcony a depressing affair. Other residents in the area are outraged as well, and so they’ve all come together at a meeting to discuss what can be done:

GD: Well I’m a graphic designer so any printed materials we may need, I’m willing to do them free of charge…

Resident 1: Oh, my son just loves tinkering with the computer. He just loves those video games. My son will make any printed materials we need.

GD: With all due respect, I have access to expensive equipment and printers and such. It’s really not a problem for me to…

Resident 1: No, my son will do it. I called this meeting so I say who does what.

Being a foreigner and not having the best command of the language, GD shuts up. But here we’ve illustrated rule number one in Italy: When the job can go to a qualified person, give it to a lesser qualified relative.

Here L pipes in.

L: Well, I’m a lawyer, and I’ve been researching this. They’ve clearly violated law XYZ123 of the Italian penal code and we have a very strong case. I’m willing to handle the legal side of this…

Resident 2: We need t-shirts! And placards!

Resident 3: Yeah! T-shirts and placards. Let’s plan a sit-in! A march! A strike!

L: Actually, I was saying that this could really be handled quite easily if we fought it in court. It’s a pretty open-and-shut case. They’ve violated the law, not to mention the potential health hazards…

Resident 4: I like the strike idea! We could wear the t-shirts and carry the placards and protest at the next community board meeting. Or have a sit-in in front of the mayor’s house.

L: That’s really not going to get us anywhere. We could resolve this quite easily as we are legally in the right here…

Resident 5: I like the t-shirt idea! Hey, Resident 1, can your son design t-shirts?

This brings us to rule number 2: Even if there's a clear, practical resolution, opt instead for a strike or a protest.

GD and L proceed to leave the meeting. Soon after, they move to GD's home country. The last I heard, the cell phone tower was still there firmly planted in the park.