The towns municipal police officer is playing street cop and directing two-way traffic on a street built for one. He wears the aviator shades that Tom Cruise sported in his film Top Gun, which two decades later are still all the rage. His sky blue uniform tucks neatly into his starched perfectly pressed black pants and he blows his whistle at a car just parked on the side of the road; the people in the car only stopping to ask directions. He’s useless but I think he feels important in that sparkly pressed uniform.

I pass the same four elderly men sitting on the cement bench outside the deli and one of them stops me. He asks (rather states) if I am from this town.  He knows full well, that I am not from Sardegna nor Italy.  For a few reasons:  One – I don’t look anything like the Sardinians nor the Italians.  Two – I know that these men have sat on the same bench in this same town for all their years, and I’ve passed them daily for over a year.  Three – They already know that I call this town home.  Four – they want to speak to the foreigner.  Five – they want the gossip, which they won’t get.  Small towns breed gossip and it spreads faster than Valentino Rossi.  I choose not to be part of the gossip mongers.  I like my life in peace.