✍️ Everyone Was Trying to Help

My many Italian misadventures with false friends

My dinner companion went to the restroom right after we ordered dessert. The order came, and before long the scoop of ice cream served with her chocolate cake had begun to melt. Still no sign of her.

Two men walked around the corner and past our table. “Does that work, warm milk?” one of them asked, in Italian.

“My mother used to add some olive oil to it,” the other said. “But warm milk is the main thing.”

Warm milk (Wikimedia photo).

Another minute or two passed, and then I got up to figure out if there was a problem. That part of the restaurant was a labyrinth. Then I heard a distant voice and followed it: a maintenance worker, broom in hand, a half-full plastic trash bag to one side. He was facing a closed door.

“Mi scusi,” I said. But he was focused on the door.

“Just try to relax!” he said forcefully, in Italian. “Try to think about something else! Think about anything else!”

That’s when I heard my date’s frustrated voice from the other side of the door. “Sono bloccata,” she said. “Sono bloccata….”

She wasn’t a strong Italian speaker and seemed to be crying. But her voice lifted when she realized I was there.

She was trapped in the bathroom, she told me. The warped wooden door was wedged into an ancient stone frame. The metal handle had come off when she pulled on it.

The maintenance man stood back, eyes wide, as I rammed a shoulder into the door. After a few tries, the door swung open. She breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Here’s the punchline. Literally, “Sono bloccata” means “I’m stuck.” But coming from the ladies’ room, it can also mean, “I’m constipated.”

The two warm-milk guys and the think-about-something-else man weren’t confused. They were trying to help.

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