© 2004, UrbisMedia
In 1979, Patty, pre-teens Laura and Lisa, and I sat in our car in a piazza parking lot in Bari, Italy, waiting for the American Express office to open. No sooner had we parked when the face of a gaunt, wild-eyed young man wearing a conductor’s kepi appeared in the side window. He babbled something beyond my minimal Italian, but I “capisco-ed” enough to discern that he was assessing me a 200 lire parking fee. I paid, and he stuffed a little white ticket under the wiper blade of our VW Rabbit.
Fifteen minutes later he returned, and we went through the routine again. At a similar interval he was back again, and again I paid. The American Express office, which was manned by Italians (meaning there is no telling when it might open) was becoming obscured by the little tickets under the wiper blade. When the man returned a fourth time, I showed an expression of reluctance to pay, but coughed up the lire anyway.
We are only talking 12 cents a time here, but by the seventh or eight assessment I had run out of lire, which is why I was waiting for American Express to open in the first place. When he seemed to take my inability to pay for a refusal to pay the young man became a little unruly, spouting streams of speech-impeded Italian and flailing those eloquent Italian gestures. I rolled up my window, but he then moved to the other side of the car to harass Patty for the money. When she rolled up her window he poked his head into the back seat through the girls’ window. They cringed and I decided it was time for paternal protection.
“Don’t hurt him, dad, he just looks scary,” Lisa said, as I yanked his thin, little body away from the car. But he still couldn’t understand my poor Italian when I tried to explain that I was out of money. When he tried to force his way past me to return to the car I grabbed him by the collar, which brought forth some Italian expletives I did understand. He struggled, screamed and cursed. And I cursed American Express for not opening.
Just as I was considering having to do my best Muhammad Ali “sting like a bee” on this much smaller opponent an elderly gentleman came by. “Is there a problem?” he inquired in slightly-accented English. I held fast to the collar while I explained. The old man then re-explained the situation to the attendant in gentle, but admonitory tones. The grumpy attendant straightened his clothes and man sauntered off to find some other parked cars.
The old gentleman stayed on for a moment to say that I wouldn’t be bothered any longer. Before he left he apologized for my having been harassed and explained, twirling his finger at the side of his head in what must be a universal signification for mental disturbance, that the attendant was, as he put it, “a ‘silly man’,” and he had been given the parking attendant job so that he would have something useful to do. “He meant no harm to your daughters, I know this silly man,” he added with kindness and wisdom.
I often think of the silly man of Bari, almost every time I see some poor soul huddled in a doorway, or panhandling, or raging at some demons that torment their troubled minds. In America they are often regarded as “wackos” and “nut-cases,” and are feared, shunned and ridiculed. I know, I have even been to blame myself.
I think that there was something sympathetic and benign in the term “silly man,” although the politically correct may find fault with that. And it seemed a humane thing to do for the community to have found that scrawny, zealous parking lot attendant in Bari something socially useful to do.
Sure, problem of mental illness is more complex and complicated than this; there are cases that require clinical treatment and hospitalization, not just a simple job to do. But it seems that somewhere between institutionalization and tossing our mentally ill onto the streets with a prescription for Prozac or Lithium, we have not come up with a humane treatment for many sufferers. The problem has roots in the inadequacies of the health care system in general, as well as our misunderstanding of mental illness, resulting in too much fear, insensitivity and neglect.
We may also need to take a good look around at the “crazy” world we’ve constructed and remind ourselves that the line between sanity and the lack of it is a blurry one. Come to think of it, that parking attendant in Bari had every reason to believe that that American who spoke incoherent Italian, pulled his pockets inside out, and grabbed him by the throat, was mentally disturbed, or at least a “silly man.”
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©1991, ©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 3.12.2004)
Radio Essay No. 57, aired, KPBS-FM, Morning Edition, March 1991