By the horns; road rage in a foreign language

I lived in Naples, Italy for three years.

Don’t ask, all I know how to say in Italian is “Hey beautiful”, “Can I have a coffee, please” and one elegantly vulgar toast.

I also picked up some driving skills. Legendary driving skills. I can drive a three-quarter ton dually 40 mph backwards down alleys so tight skinny jeans in Walmart say “wow”.

Yeah, legendary driving skills.

But, you have to be a great driver in Naples. You learn quickly that red lights don’t mean stop, they mean dodge. Oh, sometimes you stop, but only if you make eye contact with the other crossing driver. This is to be avoided at all cost.

So you become a master at peripheral vision and gut feelings. Like Han Solo flying through the asteroid field wearing the blackout helmet Luke used for light saber training.

Yeah, that’s it.

With this you also pick up the local colloquialisms, or insults, and Italians have wonderfully elegant insults. A single hand gesture is worth a paragraph of insults compared to the American equivalent, or the finger, which only evokes two simple words.

I learned early, if you truly want to insult an Italian man, make a fist, extend your pinky finger, index finger and thumb (yes, just like Spiderman) and then point it at the fellow you want to offend with your palm towards him.

This is “The Horns”, arguably the greatest insult against the Italian machismo in existence. This simple gesture tells the recipient that another man will fulfill his wife’s sexual needs because the recipient is like an old bull put out to pasture because he is impotent.

What a great insult!

However, this atomic bomb of insults isn’t something you drop lightly in Southern Italy. Being an American though, I couldn’t wait to pull the trigger with my new found arsenal. That moment came one day as I was driving home from work.

A private bypass encircles Naples. It’s a great convenience until it comes to an abrupt stop with several large concrete blocks next to an exit ramp. If you walk around the blocks you will find yourself at the end of an unfinished raised section peering sixty feet down at the city street below through sections of rebar.

Anyway, it is a great convenience because basically you can drive as fast as you want. Typical speeds around the bypass are in the 80s and 90s outside of the high traffic areas. I was cruising in the mid 80s about a mile or so from my exit ramp that day when another car flew up on my left, pulled over in front of me and slowed down. I hit the brakes, checked my mirrors and sped back up to pass.

This is where my memory flashes a slow motion montage. I have already unholstered my new insult weapon; my fingers are extended in the familiar web slinging grip at my side. Slowly I pass the offending driver, his window is down, his gray hair whipping in the wind, my passenger window is down as well. He looks over at me with a small grin and I shoot. My hand jabs in the air as I shake this vulgar fist at him.

It was as if I had pushed the red button of doom. His face instantly turns red and his grin turns into a black maw of insane Italian screaming.

What have I unleashed, I think frantically. It’s just him and I on this long deserted stretch of interstate. I am almost to my exit, wait, here is the exit before my exit. Next to me the screaming continues, his face now purple. I am hoping he doesn’t have any weapons.

I don’t want him to know where I live, so I brake hard and shoot behind his car down the exit ramp. He misses the exit and in my mind I can hear his screaming as he continues down the interstate.

Unfortunately my sigh of relief is cut short as I approach the bottom of the off ramp and see his car backing down the on ramp across from me. He is still screaming out his window while shaking his fist in the air, those white backing lights of terror coming down the ramp at me.

Luckily, traffic on his side was increasing and my lanes were clear. I turned right and beat a hasty retreat until I turned into a narrow alley off the main street, took a couple more turns to be sure he wasn’t following me and then hid in a parking lot for several hours before returning home.

Veni, Vidi, Vici, sort of.