BY ROGER WATSON
The waiter suggested that I might want to try another restaurant as they had a sixteenth birthday party taking place that evening. He indicated a long table set for about twenty people but, as I had already been seated and had a panoramic view of the Boccadasse harbour in Genoa, I was reluctant to move. Then my heart sank.
In walked twenty sixteen year olds, mainly young girls with a few boys, and no adult in sight. I imagined the evening ahead: noise; selfies; attempts to sneak drinks from smuggled bottles of vodka; et sequelae.
How wrong I was.
The girls were beautifully but modestly attired. There was no flesh – tattooed or otherwise – on display, the only piercings were earrings and no evidence of luridly dyed hair. The boys seemed respectful towards the girls, and nobody seemed, at least ostensibly, to ‘be with’ anyone else.
Given the strongly patriarchal culture of Italy, perhaps the young men feared the consequences of any transgressions.
They settled down quickly and quietly, ordered pizzas and cokes and, apart from my surprise at their excellent behaviour which, alone, kept my attention, it would have been possible to forget they were there. The only mobile phone in sight was mine as I tweeted out my astonishment at what I was seeing.
I could not help but juxtapose the scene with the equivalent one back home in England.
I have my own daughters as a reference point.
No birthday party, even long before they could legally consume alcohol, was attended without pre-drinks in someone’s house. Alcohol was smuggled into restaurants and meals were often punctuated by someone passing out or being sick in the loos. Put another way, other diners would certainly know that there was a table full of young people present.
That was over a decade ago and I thought that I had gained a new insight into, and appreciation for, Italian culture, but also wondered if I was guilty of generalising from the particular.
Yet a year later I was in another restaurant in Genoa with colleagues where a long table was set to which a party of young people, probably about fourteen or fifteen years old, arrived. We sat open-mouthed at their excellent behaviour.
It happened once more two years ago in another restaurant and, again in the same place, this week. Long tables of very young teenagers who behaved impeccably. This week it was a thirteenth birthday party. I consider Genoa to be a special place but a colleague from Rome assures me that this is perfectly normal wherever you go in Italy, and I am prepared to believe him.
Clearly, some aspect or aspects of Italian culture are responsible for the generally good behaviour of teenagers. I go to Mass here and I don’t see the pews filled with young people. In fact, at the wrong end of my sixties now, I am often one of the youngsters. So the explanation probably does not lie there. I do sense that the family remains a strong institution in Italy with strong intergenerational bonds. Respect for teachers and university professors is also high.
Reluctant as I am to criticise my own culture, Italy seems to have retained something that we have lost.
Another factor worth considering is that parents consider it safe to allow relatively young children to go out unaccompanied. They feel safe that they will not be embarrassed when they collect them, and they feel secure in the knowledge that the children will be well looked after and treated with respect.
I am not so sure that parents feel that way in England.
Of course, just like back home, while some of the teenagers in Italy will grow up to be priests and politicians, others will become organised criminals. But I get the impression they will still be polite priests, politicians and organised criminals.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.
*Apologies to anyone who thought this was about the wonderful range of international Italian food megamarkets with restaurants attached which are dedicated to all things Italian, although I can definitely recommend them. There is a good one in Porto Antico in Genoa and of the two in New York, the one off Wall Street is much loved by my family. We once spotted Richard E Grant with a plate of pasta there.