Being Italian?

There's nothing to make me feel less Italian than having my family with me here on my side of the hill.
I mean, I can't even begin to fake it when I'm with them.
Which I am now.
My husband and two boys.
My British husband and my two American boys. (grown men now really, 24 and almost 23, but for me always boys.)
Anyway, when the four of us are out together, boy do we NOT look Italian.
Or sound Italian.
Or anything remotely having to do with anything Italian.
I mean, all by myself, I still look Italian, I guess, (not in a bathing suit), even though I'm tall for an Italian woman.
I mean, I've got to, right? Since genetically speaking, I am 100 percent Italian. And born here.
Back to all of us together.
My husband is tall too.
So you can imagine our boys.
The other day, the two of them went into a local grocery store together and a woman announced (to anyone within earshot): "Guarda questi!" (Look at these two!).
"Specialmente quello!" (Especially that one, pointing straight at my one, really tall son).
"Amazza o! (Sanitized Roman version of the British: Fucking hell!)
My boys just laughed. She laughed. Everyone within earshot in the grocery store looked at them, and laughed too.
I told you, Italians are very direct.
There's not a Politically Correct bone in any Italian's body I know.
Which is very liberating. Everyone tells the truth, pretty much, about insignificant shit like that anyway. And they love stating the obvious.
It just cracks them all up.
It's really all in good fun, precisely because it is the obvious.
Italians are masters at having fun while doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, an American psychologist who has practised here for decades told me once. (Very astute observation.)
Back to us.
Besides the stature factor, there's the fact we speak English together, of course.
Although we're damn good at ordering at Italian restaurants (lots of experience).
Three of us have American accents. One of us has a British accent. One of us at times also has some weird hybrid American-British accent going (not me and not my husband).
We all speak Italian though, to varying degrees.
When we're all together sitting at a restaurant, I guess most Italians would think we were American.
Or British.
Or even German (all tall, and in my husband's case, blonde. In my boys' cases, dirty blonde. My husband's been mistaken for a German here forever).
The other night the four of us went to this little trattoria on a curve of a road near the lake a couple miles from our side of the hill.
It's actually just a handful of tables outside this cute old stone farmhouse -- with farm attached -- where they grow a lot of the produce they serve in their dishes.
There was a guy there who had drank too much, which is really rare in Italy.
I mean really drank too much. Like something you'd see in Britain on a Friday night (sorry to my British readers. You know it's true.)
It looked like he had peed in his pants, a big wet spot under his fly. And his pants were unzipped.
Staggering to his car, the owner running after him telling him he couldn't drive.
Just completely un-Italian, the whole scene.
The sheer sloppy drunkenness of it mostly.
Just doesn't happen in Italy.
But there it was happening.
A guy at the table next to us was embarrassed.
For us. The foreigners visiting Italy (actually live up the road, buddy, but there you go.)
"I wouldn't want you to think these kinds of things happen in Italy," he said to us, in Italian, just immediately assuming we'd understand (we did, but they always do that). "But this never happens."
Thanks for that, mate.
I actually know.
I was born in Naples.
Not that you'd ever guess that.
In a million years.