Un Buon Professore - KK

You know how a smell can bring back a memory? So can sound.

Hearing Italian spoken reminded me of some very happy memories. In college I took Italian as my foreign language. My professor, Dr. Raymond Petrillo, was right out of a movie. He was likely in his late 60's at the time and had a combover hair flip to one side which he kept very neatly slicked over with pomade of some sort and dyed dark brown. He was not a tall man to be sure and every day he wore Italian leather dress shoes with a white short sleeve button down shirt and a belt with his trousers pulled high to the waist (think 1960's). In colder weather he always wore a belted, shawl collar sweater on top which he would remove right before class started because moving around the room, as he taught with hand gestures, made him sweat. He always had a handkerchief to wipe his brow. I can still picture him and even the smell of that old classroom in the Academic building. 

Dr. Petrillo had the most beautiful, rich baritone voice I've ever heard. He was the real deal!

He was a very good teacher and certainly did not over-praise but when he smiled at you, you knew you had done well. And everyone wanted that smile from Dr. Petrillo.

I grew to love the Italian language more and more as time went on and even named my cat Marcella which was the main female character in our first year books. We called my cat "Celli" (chelly) for short. Celli didn't last long with me as it was discovered that yes, I am still deathly allergic to cats. But I digress.

The teaching assistant who led our lab class was named Davide. He was tall with dark eyes, curly black hair and quite good looking. Ok. He was just downright gorgeous! He even drove a red Ferrari which his Dad sent with him from Italy--true story. No girl EVER missed lab.

Between loving Dr. Petrillo, who was a stern grandfatherly type with a soft inside, and having a molto bello native speaker, Davide, as eye candy how could we not want to do our best to learn Italian? 

Fast forward 30 years and here I am in Italy. While I am definitely not a fluent Italian speaker and have lost much of what I learned (sadly) it is really fun to use a few phrases and just hear everyone else speaking it.

Thank you Dr. Petrillo for teaching me to love this language and for inspiring so many to at least try and speak it well.

Bonus fact: For those that know my youngest child, she is named Gianna. It is the Italian form of Jane. Jane goes back several generations in my family (my middle name is Jane also) and I got to use my love of Italian and honor a family tradition at the same time.

Buona notte e sogni d'oro,

Kristi