Colds, Drafts and Germs - Turning Tuscan: A Step-by-Step Guide to Going Native - page 156

Marco, the head waiter at a local restaurant:
“I went to my cousin's wedding in Abruzzo. Some of our American relatives came over,
and I rode with them to the wedding in their car. I was sitting in the front seat and they
had the air blowing all the way. They were complaining about how hot it was, and I didn't
want to be rude, so I didn't say anything. But the next morning my neck was so stiff that I
couldn't go to work for two days.”
Maurizio, a tour van operator with whom we often work:
“I had a group of Americans for about ten days. I drove them all over Tuscany for about a
week, and at the end we went up to the Lakes District for a couple of days. They put me up
in a nice room at the hotel where they were staying. We came back late from dinner and the
air-conditioning in my room had been turned on. I couldn't figure out how to shut it off, so
I slept all night with the air blowing on me. In the morning I could barely move. I felt like
I'd been beaten up by a gang of hoodlums. My whole body ached.”
ThetwomostcommonailmentsassociatedwithexposuretocoldairareknowninItalianas
torcicollo and colpo di strega . We would describe Marco's ailment, torcicollo, as a “neck
sprain”, and we would talk about how we must have “slept funny”. As for the colpo di
strega (which literally means “a blow struck by a witch”), we would describe it as a “back
ache”, and we might explain it in terms of stressed muscles and ligaments caused by overly
strenuous activity. But for the Italians both conditions are always and everywhere caused
by the same thing: exposure to cold air.
As bizarre as these tales may seem to us, the Italians, conversely, are awed and amazed
that Americans can somehow endure AC without flinching. They marvel at our apparent
immunity, and they are profoundly baffled by it. I enjoy telling them about the days when I
used to go visit my parents in South Florida where every restaurant, shop and movie theat-
er from West Palm to Miami kept the thermostat set at 65 degrees Fahrenheit all summer
long. Although outdoor temperatures were usually up in the 90s, I always had to bring a
sweater everywhere to keep from shivering at meals and movies. I tell them how everyone
goes in and out of air-conditioned buildings all day long, and that the difference between
indoor and outdoor temperatures is about 30 degrees. You can see that just thinking about
it gives them the willies.
What puzzles them is how Americans can live this way and not be sick all the time. Typ-
ically they dismiss the phenomenon by asserting that the Americans just don't realize that
they are ruining their health, but it has to catch up with them sooner or later. It's fascinating
to observe the various strategies that people adopt to address what psychologists call “cog-