Maybe I need to learn Italian...

My watch broke and I needed a haircut so I set out one day to accomplish two tasks. At the corner is a pharmacy that also carries such things as dog supplies, shoes and small kitchen appliances. A cursory look around the store did not reveal any watches so I asked a clerk whether anyone there spoke English. She took me to a young woman behind the counter. During our brief conversation, this woman was rather snippy and when I asked her if there were any watches for sale, she asked, "What do you want it for?" (I want to mop my floor with it, of course!) I couldn't bring myself to say "to tell time" because it seemed so obvious and maybe we had a miscommunication, so I pointed to her watch and said, "I just need a watch." She said, "What do you want it for?" In the meantime, the first clerk brought over several others to help, so in short order there were five people speaking rapidly and at length in Italian. Can all this be about a watch I wondered? The first clerk kept trying to tell me that they sold only medicines. But you sell dog products and toaster ovens, I wanted to say but couldn't. They collectively concluded that I couldn't buy a watch in this store or anywhere else in the neighborhood. Later in the day I found myself in an ultra-chic hair salon. I am uncomfortable in these venues in the U.S., and here, where women invest considerable time and money in looking good, I am even more out of place. Nobody spoke English and the owner--a young man--brought photos to me so that I could select a style. Immediately I could see trouble, because these hairstyles, not to mention the clothes and make-up were bizarre, the sort of thing you see on runways in Milan, Paris, etc. This young man never smiled and seemed to take himself very seriously, perhaps as an "artist of the hair." All I could do was to write "not strange," "not weird" and "I need to see" (many styles had hair completely covering the eyes) on a piece of paper and point to the most "out there" pages and shake my head no. He got the idea and directed me to the most normal haircut in the book, perhaps the only one suitable for an average citizen. I nodded yes. He worked silently and without smiling. In turn, I couldn't express my opinion about what he was doing. In the end, however, my hair looked exactly like the hair in the photo except that mine was shorter over the eyes. So, it was an awkward experience (the second of the day), but at least my hair looked good. And in Italy, that counts for a lot!