When I was 7, my family took a trip to Venice. The floating city. Romance HQ.

We went on a gondola ride.

Those things aren’t cheap, you know.

Might as well set fire to a donkey made of euros.

When parents drop heavy cash on a culturally enriching experience for their children, there’s this moment. They clutch your shoulders, look deep into your eyes, and silently implore,

“You’re about to create a core memory here.
Got it?
I could be at a spa right now, but no.
I’m investing in your sense of wonder.
In 30 years, when a therapist asks you what
your childhood was like, you say,
‘I rode in GONDOLAS. In VENICE.
THAT’S what it was like.’”

Trouble is, you can’t always control the memories you’re going to make.

By luck of the draw, we ended up with the one gondolier who’d somehow learned that English expletives were just a sort of casual emphasis, to be dropped in anywhere and everywhere.

And my precious core memory — wet limestone, fading pastel grandeur, slow rhythmic oars — is fused with the sound of a moustachioed stallion in a bateau shirt and a red neckerchief screaming,

“An’ this is the house of F——-G MARCO POLO!
You got the son of a b——h Piazza San Marco over there.
You gonna have some f——-g bruschetta tonight, bambini?
You havin’ a special vacation, you beautiful little motherf———rs?!
Bellissima!” 

I think about this most weeks.  

That’s not a biography. But now you know something.

Sidenote: Careful about trying to culture your children. Below is what happens when you play a four-year-old too much Leonard Cohen.