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Just Like Dad?
Tim Parks assumed that because his children are growing up in Italy, they won't turn out like him...
My children are Italian. They speak Italian, they gesture Italian, they twirl spaghetti with panache and know the names of all seven dwarves in Italian. My son, Michele can never be like me, I tell myself. His footballing heroes are Baggio and Del Piero.
Then one day I'm called to an urgent interview with his teachers. Your son is violent, they tell me. He keeps hitting the boy next to him. Luca Carpene. I'm appalled. The teacher explains,
"Michele hits this boy because Luca talks all the time and Michele says he can't follow the lesson."
"Can't you discipline this boy?" I demand.
But the teachers can't. They are not supposed even to shout at a child, never mind hit him or send him out in the corridor. Driving home, I'm in something of a daze. My son bashes the chatterbox beside him and the teachers can't do anything about it. My son's a control freak. Just like me.
I also hate chatterers. I can't work or travel or think without earplugs. And my father was a control freak too, always complaining that the organist played the hymns too fast and the government wasn't tough enough on the unions. We're a family of control freaks, and growing up in Italy hasn't saved Michele from being like me at all.
About half an hour in Michele stops me, and says:
"Please Pap, please, I do know I'm not supposed to, it's just I can't control myself."
I feel a sudden rush of sympathy.
"Kid, you're just like me," I tell him.
"Pap"!' We embrace, and even as we do so, I know I've won. I'm back in
control, he'll try to please me, as I always tried to please my dad, so
long as it was possible.
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