Voyeur Piazza San Pietro

Geoffrey woke up to his phone buzzing. He turned over, groaned, and tried to hit the snooze button but it did not stop the buzzing. Angrily, he grabbed his phone, and saw that it was his professor calling him. And then Geoffrey looked at the clock. It was 8:15. His class was leaving for the Vatican at 8. “Oh shit,” Geoffrey thought intelligently. Without thinking, he grabbed his key, slid into his Birkenstocks, and sprinted out the door.

His class was waiting for him and all of them had angry eyes. The Vatican had been the excursion they had all been the most excited for and Geoffrey was ruining it for them all. He had been late for class every day, so it was no surprise to them.

They rushed onto the bus and as the university got further and further into the distance Geoffrey realized with sudden horror what he was wearing. All of his classmates were dressed appropriately in nice muted colors and with no bare skin showing. Geoffrey however, due to his lack of timeliness, was wearing what he had worn to bed. He was elegantly adorned with plaid pajama pants, a statue of liberty t-shirt he had bought on his last trip to New York, his school lanyard with his key, and last but not least, the dreaded socks with Birkenstocks.

And now, Geoffrey is standing in the middle of the Piazza San Pietro, in disbelief that the guards of the Vatican allowed him through the gates. If it had not been for the slightly dumber tourist a couple rows ahead of him, he did not think he would have made it. This tourist, had decided it would be a good idea to wear a “pope hat” that looked like a poorly constructed mitre probably bought cheap from a street vendor. The guards had asked him to remove the symbol of the papacy, but the man refused saying he had “the darned right of free speech.” This did not fly with the guards and in comparison, to that conflict they did not blink twice at Geoffrey.

Geoffrey walks towards Saint Peter’s Basilica, his head filled with prayer of thanks to God that there is at least one person in the world that is dumber than him.

(May 23, 2019, Piazza San Pietro)


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