The Basil Field

Everyone experiences a turning point in life – middle school, the discovery of champagne, eating too much Ben & Jerry's after a bad breakup…we’ve all been there, but did I expect to have one of my greatest life tales slash terrifying moments in life take place in a basil field?

No, I can wholeheartedly attest I never saw that one coming. 

This is 16 year-old Shley in Italy. Does she look like someone who can handle life lost in a basil field? No. But her hair looked fab. P.S. You know this is throwback because I've been allergic to Nutella since age 21.

Yep, I Ashley, am not to be outdone. Ever. Most kids get lost in malls. Me? Ha I can find my mom at a sale in less than 10 seconds.  

So here I am: I am 16, an exchange student in Italy, relatively fluent in the language, but true to my suburban American roots, absolutely inept to the concept of Sunday work hours and transportation time tables.  Hello! In America everything is open all the time!

You’re thinking I probably missed a bus or poorly translated something into an offensive Italian blunder, but no. I’ve missed many a bus, but not this one. In fact things would have been much better if I missed the bus.

You see, in Italy, and in most first and second (and probably third) world nations, you need a bus ticket for the ride there and the ride back.  The ride back is key.

One Sunday morning, I had one bus ticket left, used it to arrive to my destination and thought, I’ll buy the return bus ticket on my way back from the newsstand like I do every other time I need to ride the bus. I am after all a woman of routine nature.

I go to dinner with friends, avoid my host family like the plague (we had our differences) and waltz my way back to the bus stop ready to buy my ticket and go home like the perfect little adult I thought I was.

Ha.

Step 1:  The newsstand is closed on Sunday. Did I stop to observe this when I arrived in the morning? Of course not, that was too much for my underdeveloped teenage brain.

Step 2: Before I left the United States, my favorite show was ALIAS. You know, the show that made it cool to have ripped biceps like Michelle Obama (before we even knew Michelle Obama) and dress like a ninja- to that I say "Thank you, Jennifer Garner." To get to the point, I figured I could sneak on the back of the bus like a spy, get my ride home, exit said bus, go to confession and all would be fine. I mean, I was in a Catholic country was I not? As long as I experienced guilt and said 120 Hail Mary’s, I would be A.OK!

Step 3: Variables.  Had I factored in the variables like oh I don’t know, my cell phone dying, having 30 cents in cash, and a cranky Italian bus driver who was pissed he had to work on a Sunday, I might have walked back to my friend’s house and asked for a ride, but alas I did no such thing.

Step 4: We are going the wrong way.  Oh if I had the robust curse word vocabulary that I utilize now, we might have turned the right way, but as I realized the bus was in an area I’d never seen and I was basically a stowaway, I. was. stuck.  So I sat in the back watching myself get farther and farther away from my destination. As my brain rattled on to conclude the ramifications of riding on a bus without a ticket, I decided if I spoke up I would probably get deported and never be allowed to eat pasta again. I was first world problems before there were hashtags and first world problems. The stakes were too high. So I sat quietly in the back until the bus stopped. I heard “last stop” and when I poked my head up- there we were: in a basil field.  Just me, a stranger and a very angry bus driver together in a basil field.

On the one hand if you are going to be stranded in Italy, you may as well fulfill a few stereotypes so the strandedness in basil field seemed quite fitting.

On the other hand I am 16 and stranded in a freaking basil field!  I also prefer oregano.

To clarify, only I became stranded after the bus driver saw me poke my head up and asked to see my ticket. I quickly faulted to the worst line you can ever say as an American “I don’t speak INSERT LANGUAGE HERE” to which he responded with various arm movements and sentences of incredulability. (Not a word). He was incredulous, that is what I’m trying to get across.

The flailing ended when he pointed out the door and directed his eyes at me, then outside, a non-verbal communication (thanks speech 101) to get the eff off his bus.

So I did. I walked into the late Sunday sun, into a basil field. The closest building in my 16 year-old mind was at least two miles off. I got off the bus and began to walk.  When I look back, I think I compared my circumstances to the scene in Holes when Shia LaBeuf is near death in a dessert trying to survive off canned peaches (am I remembering that correctly?)  It definitely wasn’t that dramatic, but I felt it, and my therapist said individual feelings are always valid. She’s a smart woman, so roll with it, will you?

I traversed the basil field. I use my last minute on my phone to call my host sister who was of little help. Actually, zero help. She could not comprehend where I was or what to do. So I hung up and called America.

And when I say America, you know I mean Mom.  When your only child lives across the world, and you get a direct phone call, you answer and she did. To this day I think it is still the best call she has ever answered.  Let’s be real, she was absolutely terrified and .5 seconds away from boarding the next flight to Italy to rescue me, but when you ask her about it now, she laughs.  She told me to walk to the building and get myself home.

Well, duh.

It was sound advice, albeit common sense, but common sense I needed to hear because while I thought the story of Ashley Hughes would dramatically end in a basil field, my mom, aka my number one fan, was confident I would make it home.

Aside: Thanks for believing in me, mom. You really always have my back!

Anywho, I digress… a lot. I walk; I sweat and low and behold the building that was at least two miles away (it was probably a half mile away) is a pizzeria. I shit you not. It couldn’t have been a Starbucks or a Nandos’ this isn’t America or the country that tries to be America (lookin atchu England), but a pink pizzeria.

The man in the pizzeria takes no pity on me and shoes me out but points right. I start right and I swear this is how it ends. I see a mirage. There are palm trees, fountains and the sun is beating down. It was like the Italian version of "Aladdin."  I walk down a street lined with palm trees towards a white dancing fountain and there are humans. I almost considered walking up to a wall and stating “open sesame” in the hopes of finding a lost treasure, but held off. It felt like an alternate universe, an alternate universe I would later learn is a town called Gallarate and is in fact three train stops beyond my town.  I heard a train whistle and prayed for civilized transport.

You’d like to think the story ends here, but it doesn’t. Nope. I go past the mirage that is in fact an actuality a big ass fountain, to the train station where of course there are no tellers because it is still FLIPPING SUNDAY! And the ticket machines all read “disponibile.” That’s Italian for “out of order” and yes, I 100 percent lied when I told the bus driver I did not speak Italian. Of course I speak Italian; it was the only language I heard for six months!

So I get on the next train and flipping pray to every god I can think of- Grandma, other Grandma, Zeus, Xenia the Warrior Princess- that I will not get stopped by the train police (they are real).  And I don’t.  How I became agnostic we will never know, but I made it home in one piece. My mom was right, my host sister was a nimrod and I get to tell the world that I got stranded in basil field based on my own stupidity.

But you know what they call childhood stupidity in the adult world? Life experience. And I’ve got plenty more to tell you about, so continue to explore Twenty Something, send me feedback and click SUBSCRIBE (top right corner, team), so you'll know when I launch my next post.