My First F-Bomb

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard someone use the “F” word. I feel as if I had always known that it was not appropriate for my 11-year-old-self to use this word - no matter how nicely it rolled off my tongue. I do, however, remember exactly the first time it was used on/at me.

When I was 13-years-old my family went on a road trip through Italy. My father, mother and two younger sisters jumped in the family van and drove from Heidelberg, Germany to visit the great cities of Italy. One of my mother’s favorite movies was “A Little Romance”, which was filmed in Venice. While we enjoyed a gondola ride through those same Venice channels, she pointed out specific places she recognized from the film. We visited Florence and re-created an old photograph of my father holding me as a younger child in front of the gilded doors of the Bapistry. We visited Palermo and saw the mummies in the catacombs and stopped at all the churches and cathedrals we could to view the art and gape at the relics of Saints.

But what stands out to everyone in the family is our visit to Rome. Sometime between putting our hands in the “Mouth of Truth” and visiting the Colosseum we, my father, sisters and I, managed to lose my mother. We had decided we would eat lunch at a very fancy Italian restaurant you may have heard of, McDonalds, but we were unsure of which direction we needed to go. My mother wanted to ask for directions, my father assumed he knew the way. The incident was mostly due to us thinking she was right behind us, while she thought we were waiting for her to ask directions. In any case, we lost my mother in Rome. She couldn’t have been parted from us for more than 10 to 15 minutes, but when we found her it was obvious that she was infuriated that we would leave her behind. And it was in that moment that we found my mother that I experienced the true meaning of the “F” word.

“Where the fuck were you?!” (Okay, I’ll be honest, I’m not positive it was exactly that phrase, but it was along those lines.) My mother was fuming as she had thought we just walked away from her - which we did, but not intentionally. Needless-to-say, this was an eye opening moment in our childhood.

After my mother’s outburst we continued on to our lunch as if nothing had, happened enjoying our chicken nuggets, from the train station McDonalds in Rome, Italy, and quietly waiting to make sure that we really had ridden out the storm.