Allegedly

Plans to visit Genoa prompt vivid memories of my earliest history lessons in elementary school.

We had switched from the big, fat green pencils doled out by the teacher's assistant du jour, to personally owned and maintained yellow #2 pencils with attached red erasers which we sharpened multiple times a day queueing up for the Boston hand cranked sharpener screwed securely into the window ledge -- shoving and pinching and whispering as stealthily as we could before being called out by the not really intelligent and (still today) smug moon-faced girl who had spent the first month of first grade crying every morning after her mother slipped away. But I digress in bitterness....

This would have put us in second grade, which would also make sense because my best friend in second grade, at least while he still lived in my town before his father was transferred, was a guy named Chris, and he taught me how to spell Christopher. And so I only had to learn to spell Columbus, Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria to ace the test!

So, we were taught that Christopher Columbus was Italian and he sailed westerly, hoping to find a quicker route to the East Indies (India to you and me) but instead ran smack into the New World -- which was really great for him because an alternative was to fall off the edge of the Earth due to it at that time having a plane-ular shape.

While in the story we memorized Sig. Columbus was Italian, and his three little ships sailed from Genoa (pronounced ji-KNOW-ah in my little town), he was given financing for his adventure by Queen Isabella of Spain. And even for my 7-year-old brain this didn't make much sense, because common folk having audiences with a Queen were pretty rare occurrences (except in scenarios like the pussy cat who goes to London), and getting in to see the Queen and immediately asking for a pile of money was just a ridiculous idea.

So I, with my superkid powers of analysis and detection, knew that something was hinky with the allegedly Italian Columbus and the tale of the New World.

A quick Google re: Sig. Columbus, and a heated conversation about visiting Genoa with a zealot-ous Spaniard, suggests that Chris is a garlic that may not be fully peeled yet.

(Just, don't mention this in New York... especially in October. Unless you want to sleep with the fishes.)

I think I'll learn some maritime history while in Genoa.