A quick pre-Italia post

I have been procrastinating publishing a post about my trip to Italy because I want to be sure that I encompass as much of it's greatness as is possible, and I know that it will take some time and some major effort to try to portray it all in just words and pictures. There are so many little side-stories and funny moments. It is a daunting task (in my eyes) for me to try to write about it all. So there's my disclaimer on this entry so I don't feel guilty about revealing the tiniest little something that ties back to our time in Italy...

It is true that more often than not, if you drop a piece of bread with butter, it will fall butter-side down. Bagel & cream cheese? Yup; the cream cheese glues your freshly-spread bagel to the floor. Cupcake with frosting? Now you have an excuse to cry.

But does this phenomenon also apply to bookmarks?? Shouldn't both sides of the bookmark weigh the same and thus give it a fair 50/50 chance of landing on one particular side? After all, it's just a piece of thick paper. Let me answer this question for myself. Yes, this same theory above seems to apply to bookmarks. At least my bookmark. And just like the way you feel when you drop the bread, bagel or cupcake and see that again, they have all landed on the opposite side that you would wish, so does this dropped bookmark of mine bring out feelings of distress.

When my friends and I were in Florence, we stayed in a hostel that was just down the road from the piazza that displayed Michelangelo's David. Now there is a replica of the marble statue in the piazza, and the original is in a museum. After admiring the replica, I didn't really have a strong desire to pay money to get inside the museum to see the original. Merrilee, however, was eager to see the work of art, as well as other amazing works of art by more art-geniuses, so she went inside. Kristen and I decided to try to find an internet cafe in the mean time, but we were distracted by the guards at the museum entrance, who very openly flirted with us. I had an Italian-English dictionary, so we flipped through to find the right words to say and played charades a lot. Of course the 2 men were in competition for our attention, so the insults were flying between them. The easiest-to-pick-up insult was one of them comparing the other guy's "man-parts" to David's; very small. "Not a real man". This got a good laugh out of everyone, and it became the on-going joke between us throughout the rest of our Italy trip. We saw boxers that depicted the section of David's body on what you might imagine should have been on the inside of those boxers. I mean, the guy's crotch was everywhere. Like 16-year-old teenage boys, us girls had a good laugh making reference to the size (or lack) of this David warrior's manhood.

Fast-forward to our plane ride back to the states... I open my book after not doing any reading the entire week, to find a new bookmark placed in the pages. What is this, I wonder? It is none other than David's family jewels in bookmark-form, staring me in the face. I laugh out loud and go to find the girls who are across the 2 aisles from me. Turns out Merrilee snuck it in my book back in Florence. Sneaky girl! Well, as I think it is so funny, I have kept using it as my bookmark. I read a lot, so it has been stuck in many a book since. However, part of my reading time is on my commute to and from work. This gets tricky, as I don't necessarily want other people to see what is on my bookmark when I open my book. So I always strategically place my bookmark so that the back of it shows when I first open my book. The back is decorated with black and white sunflowers and has information of the artwork that is on the opposite side. Very non-offending.

There have been about 3 times in the last 4 months that I have accidentally dropped my bookmark in public. PANIC!! As I un-gracefully try to catch it mid-air, I think, "Please don't land genitalia-side-up!" But of course, it always does. WHY? Why would my bookmark do that? Why hasn't it ever landed with the innocent sunflowers showing? And I know as I hurriedly stoop to pick it up, I have made more of a scene scrambling to catch it mid-air and dropping to the ground so fast you would think there was gun fire, than if I had just casually let it fall and non-chalantly bent to get it. Now there are twice as many people that are looking at me and my fallen bookmark, and pretty sure my face is bright red. I can't bear to look any of them in the eye. I vow from then on to hold extra-tight to my little man David bookmark, but inevitably, I will drop it again. And I will bet my woman-parts that it will land man-hood-side up.