Thursday 28 February 2008

But it's traditional - part 2

The last post under this heading was serious; this one is.....hmmmm

Italian men have a habit of touching their groins. Don't all men, I hear you cry? In Italy the story is that they do it to ward off bad luck. So where other people touch wood in the form of their desks or their skulls, Italian men touch their ..... attributi.

And why not? We all know what is there, and sometimes one gets an itch (I used to work for an elderly lady who often had an itch; her male employees did not know what to do with their eyes); other times one's clothes need to be adjusted, so that things fall ...just so.

It would seem, though, that this is no longer legal in Italy. Read all about it here (the link includes the word 'internationalcrime' - is that not going a little bit too far?). It might offend other men, the judge said (and women?). I suppose it might depend on how the guy carried out the offending action exactly; 'lasciviously', 'absent-mindedly' or 'obsessively' are some of the possible adjectives that come to mind. Reminds me of the story of the Irish schools, where only Irish should be spoken - when a girl sneezed and said 'excuse me' she was expelled.

Do Italian judges have nothing more to worry about? Here's a small hint: 'Mafia'.



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