An unexpected visitor came to my house on a Sunday afternoon and you won't believe what he said.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Audio Production: Ken Wendt
Original Art: Pete Whitehead
Additional Vocals: Cori Birce
7MSS2E38PrejudiceAgainstItalians - powered by Happy Scribe
Hey, everybody. Aaron here. If you count today, there are only two more stories left in Season 2. This season has really flown by. Also, we wanted to thank you, because yesterday you broke our record for most downloads in one day. That's a lot of stories. Thank you for myself, Pete, Ken, Cori, the whole team.
Now most of you are with us each week, but if you're just listening for the first time today, there's a whole catalog of stories to catch up on from Season 1 and 2. Trust me, they really do fly by and they're super bingeable. For now, enjoy today's story titled Prejudice Against Italians. You'll see what I'm talking about. Enjoy.
Something has been bothering me for about a year. I've been wrestling with this, and I figured this would be a great day to share it with you and maybe together we can make sense of this. About a year ago, summertime, it was a Sunday, and I know this because I was making Sunday sauce. By the way, I told a story about Sunday sauce in Season 1, if you want to get all the nitty-gritty details about what goes into a marinara sauce.
It's great, but in short, many of you know this, a Sunday sauce is an Italian-American tradition. You're just making marinara sauce all day with other food, but pasta and family can come in and out, and it's so much food. It creates this aromatic experience from the beginning of the morning when you're making the crushed tomatoes and the garlic and the olive oil and the basil and the oregano.
You're cooking it throughout the day, and the transformation of this sauce into something that was acidic into something that's very palatable, plus the smells, it just creates this feeling of home. It's just great then to share that meal with everybody.
I know this because that Sunday, I'm making marinara sauce and I'm stirring the sauce in the kitchen. I also got Tony Bennett in the background because my grandfather and my dad… My grandfather didn't cook, but when food was being made on a Sunday, he had Frank Sinatra playing. When my dad would cook, he had Tony Bennett playing. They're both singing standards.
Now I'm doing the sauce and I'm playing Tony Bennett. Whatever the song is, pick a standard. In the wee small hours of the morning. I'm crying, they're crying. It's just what we do. It's a great experience. I'm standing in the kitchen, listening to Tony Bennett making this sauce, and Cori reminds me that there's going to be someone stopping by the house to pick something up.
This was a gentleman. I say older gentleman, but it's relative. It's like late '60s or early '70s, she had met. I think it was a Facebook Marketplace thing. Cori's always got a side hustle going on, which is amazing. She's got the voiceover work, she's always repurposing furniture, she's making things. She's really creative.
We got a carousel of people coming around the house all the time. People I don't even know. There's bags on the porch. People are picking the bags or dropping bags off. They're leaving bumper cars. People in our neighborhood think we're nuts. Just people coming back and forth all the time. It's cool.
This was no different. She said, "This guy is going to stop by," and she said, "I ended up running into these people, this guy and his wife, at the grocery store and had a nice conversation with them." She vetted in that way, and they established a familiarity with each other, so it was this positive thing.
"This guy is going to stop over. He seems really nice." "Cool. Awesome." There's a knock at the door, I'm stirring the sauce, and from my kitchen, I can see the front door and I can also see into the dining room where Cori's standing. I'm feeling so good on this day that I tell the gentleman, "Come on in." It's very rare for me, because I'm a very private person.
You know, from these stories, I don't let everybody in my house, not like an open door extravaganza. I have a vetting process. It's a sanctuary in here, but I was feeling good. I said, "Come on in." He steps in the house, he smiles. We say, "Hi. Hey, how you doing?" Doing a little bit of small talk, but really only a few minutes in, guy starts asking questions about the sauce.
This is fine. I'm stirring, and I'm talking to him, and he says, "What are you making?" I said, Sunday sauce, marinara sauce." He says, "That's great." He goes, "A lot of garlic." There's some garlic, but yeah, you can smell the garlic. It's really awesome.
He goes, "You use onions?" I said, "A little bit, sometimes no. I'm not a huge onion guy, but I will put something like that or a shallot, something just to add that dynamic into the sauce." "Oh, cool." He goes, "It smells good. I'm really hungry." I said, "You can stop by later when it's finished, I'll give you some sauce." "Oh, that'd be great." We're just talking.
Then he says, "Do you have Italian American ancestry? You have some of that in your bloodline?" I thought, "Maybe he's Italian," and I said, "Yeah, I have some. It's on my dad's side. That's where this whole tradition started." He goes, "That's great." I said, "Are you Italian American?" He goes, "No, something. I'm German and English." I was like, "Cool."
He says, "You want to hear a joke?" I'm looking at him, and I remember saying, "Yeah, I don't know." I think I said, "Yeah, I don't know," because I didn't know where this was going. He begins to tell this joke. Cori's just staring. Her eyes are wide.
He laughs a little bit. He goes, "What's the difference between a smart Italian and a unicorn?" I said, "I don't know." I'm frenetically stirring as this is going on. He goes, "Nothing. They're both fictional characters. "Ha ha ha," he's laughing. I'm not laughing. I'm standing over the stove. I'm looking at this guy thinking, "Who the hell is this guy? You're coming in hot to my house?"
Just again, as I told you, you establish the fact that I have some Italian American ancestry. We establish the fact that you don't. We're not Python, just laughing it up about the culture, and you coming in leading with an Italian joke, questioning the… It was an intelligence joke. I was stunned.
I wanted to take this wooden spoon I was stirring with, throw it across the frigging room, and hit him right in the middle of his head. I was so angry at this moment. Cori knew I was and he knew I was because I didn't laugh, I just stood there. I didn't say a word. I'm just staring at him, looking at him, and I'm stirring.
He goes, "I'm just an old-timer. It's just a joke." "Sure it is." "Well, I better get going. Thanks for all the things bye." Leaves the house. Year later, I'm still trying to wrestle with what the hell that was, but more importantly… All I could think about, by the way, when he said that was that line in Goodfellas and Joe Pesci goes, "Prejudice against Italians. Prejudice against Italians, in this day and age."
I didn't think that's what it was, but you could fool me. In what possible world is it ever okay? A year later, I'm still thinking about this. Talking to you about it. I'm trying to understand from his point of view, who signs off on that comment in his brain? Who greenlights that comment and says, "That's what we're going with?"
What I realized is the vast majority of people operate the other way: kind, respectful, humble, but there's this minority of people that are always going to act like assholes and operate in a very obscure, strange way. I will never understand it, as hard as I try. Never will, but what I can do is control my boundaries. I cannot let a prick like that in my house again, that's one thing I can control.
The other thing is to do what my grandparents and parents taught me to do, which is when I go into someone else's home as a guest, I take my shoes off, not just literally, but metaphorically; humble myself in their home. Man, that night, thank God I had that spaghetti dinner with the sauce, because I'll tell you what, I was feeling it, and it really helped nourish my soul. I thought as I was eating, "It had to be some very smart people who came up with this recipe." You know what I mean?
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Audio production by Ken Wendt. You can connect with Ken or inquire about his audio production services at kenwendt.com, that's kenW-E-N-D-T.com.
Original artwork work by Pete Whitehead. Find out more about Pete's work at petewhitehead.com. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts. Lastly, I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
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