We were sitting at a table of 6. Squeezed between 5 tables in a crowded dining space on the first night of our group tour of Italy. Here on the Lido (near Venice) the tour provided two bottles of wine per table — one white, one red. Everybody at our table was drinking red.

“This isn’t going to work,” I announced to our little table. We were out of red wine before any part of the meal came.

I asked if we could get more… “No,” the waitress said. “One bottle of each per table.”

We looked around. People at the other 5 tables were drinking white wine or hardly any wine at all.

“What’s the matter with these fucking people,” I told the wife loud enough for the rest of our table to hear. “Who comes to Italy and doesn’t drink red wine?”

Our little group whole-heartedly agreed. We had two 20-something women who grew up in Puerto Rico, and a mother with her college-age daughter from northern Florida (southern Alabama). I had an easier time understanding the spanglish of the Puerto Rican girls than the confused southern mumblings of the Florida mom. The daughter, like almost every white girl her age, sounded like a Valley Girl. I’m not sure when the long vowels of Southern California took hold of almost every girl’s mouth in America, but I’m blaming that little bitch Barbie…

Our little table started to plot a solution, but the wife already had a plan.

She popped up, strode to each table and asked. “Are you going to finish that?” the way a homeless man might ask for the butt of a half-smoked cigarette.

They handed over the precious bottles with ease. Like taking red wine from a baby.

“That’s why I love her,” I told our little table. “Who else is just going to go ask everybody for their unused wine. Ask her nicely, and you might get extra desserts too.”

While the other travelers retired to their rooms to fight the jet lag, we made sure not a drop went to waste. When we looked up, we were the last in the room. Even the staff had gone home, leaving our glasses and six empty bottles on our table.

Make that 8, we dug into the white wine too.

Second dinner

Our little group gathered again for the first night in Florence. The same women found the “wine table.” The restaurant provided big jugs of Chianti. The wife scouted the other tables. She only managed to get one half-finished bottle.

But the waiter brought more. Finally, instead of a big jug, they brought a little carafe — just enough for two glasses. That was gone before the waiter had a chance to walk away.

We asked for more. The answer was “no”.

“Then can we buy a bottle,” the wife said like this was going to be a good idea. Out came her credit card and another big jug with the straw bottom appeared — “18 euros, that’s pretty cheap,” the wife said.

Only this time, the Puerto Ricans and the Florida mom were done. It fell to Florida girl, the wife and I to finish the last bottle, and the wife quit after the first half glass.

I’m no quitter, I kept going until the bottles were all empty.

I felt fine until I tried to stand up. I was having a very hard time keeping my balance. Out the front door, I tried to pull out my phone to find the directions back to the hotel, and knocked the restaurant menu off the table.

Suddenly, there were people all around to help pick up the sign, and I quickly stumbled off out of embarassment.

Although I was sure I was the only one to know the way home, I was dead last in the party and could hardly gain on the group. Like a dog sniffing on both sides of the sidewalk, I was covering twice the distance as the rest of the group. I couldn’t go fast enough to make up the ground.

Out front, pacing the group was the wife. Notorious for getting lost going anywhere other than from home to work, I had little confidence we were headed in the right direction.

It was only two turns: left then right. Less than a 5 minute walk. But I was pretty sure we made the wrong right turn.

“I tink ur’r wong, honeyyy,” I sort of yelled loudly from the back.

Silence. I was just about to repeat myself much louder when… “here it is,” the wife said, and we stumbled into the lobby of our hotel.

“I remembered the shop with the wedding dresses on the corner.”

Second thoughts

The next morning, we didn’t make the free breakfast. We roused from bed just before lunch.

“I don’t want to see another bottle of Chianti for a long time,” the wife said.

“We need a safe word,” I said. “I don’t feel safe when you order wine.”

Like most of the “stupid things” in life, the safe word came down to a Seinfeld episode.

“You know the one where George needs a safe word,” the wife said.

“You mean when Kramer guessed George’s password,” I said. “You know for the chocolate syrup.”

“No the one when Jerry and George are breaking into a house to erase a voicemail…”

Before I could look up the secret code (it’s Bosco by the way) the wife had our safe word:

Tippy-toe.

By the next tour dinner two things happened:

1. The wife only had to move toward the other tables and they gave up their “extra” bottles of red wine without a word being exchanged.
2. Everyone in the tour was chanting “Tippy-toe” every time one of us was about to do (or say) something stupid.

At the final dinner in Rome with our same little table for 6.

“Can I buy another bottle of wine…”

“Tippy-toe, Tippy-toe..”

And I managed to walk slowly and quietly out of the restaurant without knocking anything (or anyone) over…