Foiled Again!

I warn everyone, everyone I know, not to take the 64 bus or other tourist lines in Rome, or even the metro, if one can help it, because I have been ripped off so often by professional pick-pockets. Eight years ago I lost everything, every card, every scrap of cash, my driver’s license, my passport, simply because my hands were full of luggage and people were jostling up to me from behind, pushing me onto the train; I didn’t even feel the hand that reached in my pocket to steal the document pouch. Another time, after the first time, when I was duly guarded and attentive, I clutched my purse underneath a tote bag, braced my arm against both, squeezing my own elbow so no one could yank my purse off my shoulder, but, again, the bus was so crowded, I did not feel the person who took a razor and sliced open my purse and emptied its contents, did not even FEEL this happening, as I stood there savvy and secure. And I did not, a future time, feel the man or woman’s hand that reached into another jacket pocket to steal my cell phone. And I won’t even go into the time I lost all my clothes—this has happened twice—when I left rental cars parked where hotels told me to park them, and the windshields got bashed to smithereens.

More seasoned travelers sort of smirk at me as though they are immune, and I am simply vulnerable out of ignorance.

“Dear, dear,” they shake their heads, “surely you know better than to carry a passport in the city, know better than to cram all your resources into one pouch, one pocket.”

“Surely you know better than to keep the ringer of your phone turned on so that, when it rings, and you answer, a zillion watching eyes will see directly which pocket in your shirt or coat or pants is the cache of instant treasure.”

“Surely you know not to put the hotel parking pass in the rental car window. You are advertising: “Tourist here! Come rob me!”

The thing I do not say to these smug, un-violated travelers is that absolutely, they avete ragione, are right, so right, and I have been traveling in Italy since long before cell phones existed, since I was a teenager with an aluminum frame backpack with orange day-glow parachute silk flapping and Europe on $5 a Day in the side pocket along with my Earthshoes and bong. I should know better and do know better, but am no longer a tourist and seldom a traveler, there are simply some days I want to walk to the market with just my jacket on and my wallet in my pocket, walk as though I lived sleepily as I do in fact live in a forgotten paradise of goodwill among neighbors.

What a shame that the world is still trying to teach me the sad lesson that I don’t.