The "Are There Bugs in Italy?" .

“Are there bugs in Italy?” my mom asked me the other night. She was dead serious. Apparently a friend of hers had told her that there were no screens on the windows when she stayed in Italy, so—obviously –that means that they are no bugs at all.

I do this really pretentious thing sometimes where I just stare at someone until they slowly but surely—and in the most uncomfortable way possible—realize that they are being stupid. This was one of those moments. Except … it didn’t work! She just stared at me longer with her little smile; naively pondering the possibility that the only reason people do not have screens on their windows is that there are absolutely no insects in an entire country.

So I had to politely tell her no—since my bitch face didn’t work (it almost always has, maybe it was an off bitch-face day). I said Italy indeed has bugs, they probably just don’t find it necessary to separate themselves from the outdoors as much as we do in America. My home in France did not have screens on it and they opened the windows and there were flies all over the kitchen. But it didn’t really bother my host family. Are there any countries with no bugs? I feel like that’s a stupid question. I think every country has bugs but nobody has become as obsessed as we have with keeping them all out.

As Americans we have been separating ourselves from the outdoors for decades, and this is one example of how we have created a living indoor planet for ourselves so we do not have to face the real one. It also explains why we are disconnected from nature. We do not want to know where our food comes from, who made our clothes, where our iPhone came from, nor the process it took for us to be able to pump our huge vehicles full of (relatively) cheap gas.

I’m not saying they do it better in Europe I’m saying that we in America have lost a relationship with the Earth when we stopped planting seeds ourselves and started purchasing super-sized produce in a supermarket. Nobody wants to know how those strawberries got so huge, nor the land it took up to make them. Planting our own tomato plants would get dirty and messy, so we put lawns on our property instead of gardens. To make sure our lawn does not turn brown or get any God-forbidden weeds in it we spray the whole thing with petro-fertilizers and pesticides. Don’t want to look like a peasant.

This is similar to how we climb into our own cars to go to work. We don’t want to walk because the elements may be too rough, and we definitely don’t want to sit in a shared space and have to face other people. Having our own car is our own screen against the world.

We don’t even shop outdoors. There are no malls in Europe; all the stores are outside so you walk to the shops, go inside one, come outside, and walk to another if you want. Here have enormous facilities—nobody wants to think about what the land was used for beforehand—that contain all your shopping needs without you having to step a foot in that treacherous outdoor space they call planet earth.

Italy is not that far away and it is not some magical land with no bugs. We have to be mindful of our surroundings and outdoors. We don’t have to stay so separated from nature like a screen that protects us from insects. Breath the air, play in the dirt, look up from your phones as you walk outside, grow your own shit. The moment we appreciate what the planet we have been given is the moment we can progress the environmental movement.