Today, I caught a pickpocket--in the act.

I've related this story to some friends, but it's about time I formalized it writing.

As I'm sure many know, Italy is known for its pickpockets. Some of the world's best thieves come from Italy, and while tourists must always be careful no matter where they travel, in Italy, they must be especially guarded. I have heard stories abound of thievery in subways, in churches, and even in the street during broad daylight. Italian thieves are skilled. Visitors are plenty. It makes for a pretty lucrative business for those without other skills, especially among the impoverished. For those with little money and little education, it makes sense (even if it's not right) to go the easy route and become pickpockets, because everyone is so used to them that even those who are caught probably won't receive much more than a slap on the wrist.

So on this day, the Day of the Republic (more on that later), while walking up a relatively busy street in Rome, I ran into three intending pickpockets, whose connivering actions I managed to thwart. Because I escaped unscathed, this makes for a good story.

It was morning time. We were walking up a relatively busy street in Rome. It was Day of the Republic--Italy's equivalent of Independence Day in the United States--and there were a lot of people out and about on the streets. I was strolling along at a leisurely pace, probably about a dozen steps ahead of Jill and Andrea, taking in all the sights and absorbing the city. It's a habit I've developed over the years... just noticing things. Whether it's in Los Angeles or London, or anywhere else, I like to look around and find random details amidst my surroundings.

That might explain why I noticed them and made a mental note to observe them. There were three of them--all female--just ahead of me on the street. They looked like they might be a family. A mother and two daughters, aged nine and fourteen years-old (that's my personal guess), dressed a bit raggedly, looking similar to the poor who beg for money in the streets. The fourteen year-old had a white, rectangular sheet of cardboard that I at first took for some sort of sign. And what had almost unconsciously tipped me off to pay more attention to the three was the fact that I had seen them glance at me and then look at each other, as though giving some sort of signal. I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to see their nonverbal communication with each other; in retrospect, that was probably their way of saying "hey, we just found our next target."

None of these observations were necessarily conscious at the time I made them, but I as I recalled my thought process later, I realized that something had definitely triggered my brain to pay attention to these three more than anyone else on the street. At this point, however, I had yet to suspect anything devious. This was our fourth and final day in Rome, and since we had visited all the places we had wanted to visit in the three days before, today was intended to be a more casual, carefree day of walking around and exploring the city. Thus, I was feeling quite at ease as I walked.

As I neared them, I had nothing concrete to suspect. The three of them at first made like they were walking up the street like everyone else, but then they made an attempt to beg for money, directly engaging with me rather aggressively. And initially, that's what I thought they were: beggars.

It was when they continued begging for more than one instance of dialogue that the mental alarms shot up. I quickly realized that I was suddenly in a rather bad situation, because in my shot experience in Rome, beggars had never been aggressive.  If you ignored them, they moved on to the next passer-by. Furthermore, I couldn't help but notice that the fourteen year-old was holding her piece of cardboard right at waist level--a classic ploy to shield the actual act of pickpocketing from witnesses.

I immediately sped up my pace to slip past the three women. In a situation like this, I knew the best course of action was to try to avoid conflict and extricate myself out of any potential harm's way. The mother, however, must have sensed my awareness, because in a flash, her fingers were in my left front pocket, where my wallet lay.

The instant I felt the intruding hands, I slammed my own hand over my pocket, effectively preventing her from taking anything bulky out, and checked to make sure my wallet was still in place (it was), then spun around past her at the same time, turning to face her directly. A split second later, I subtly checked my right front pocket for my cell phone (also there). All of this happened in one beat, and a second later, I was facing the opposite direction, staring into the mother's eyes, visibly annoyed that she had tried to steal from me. I didn't hesitate. I made a commotion.

"HEY! HEY! HEY!" I blurted out. "What are you doing?" In the heat of the moment, I couldn't be bothered with yelling at her in Italian.

The funny thing was that rather than turn and run, the woman stood there like a wolf before a pounce, legs tensed, slightly leaning forward, as though she was still debating on lunging forward and grabbing my wallet. Suspecting her intentions, I took an additional step back and did the first thing that came to my mind--an action that still makes me laugh when I think about it. I brought my right index finger up, wagged it at her scoldingly, gave her a cold, all-business glare, shook my head, and said, simply:

"NO."

At this point, an Indian vendor across the street who had witnessed the whole incident started yelling as well, giving me backup. I assume he was saying something long the lines of "get out of here, you scoundrels!" although I can't be sure, since it was in Italian. Realizing any semblance of a cover had been completely blown, the three vermin slinked back into the crowd and fled the other way. The situation diffused, I turned around and continued on my way, giving a wave of thanks to the merchant for his added help. He nodded a reply of "you're welcome," which included with it an expression of "I've seen this before; was just glad to help."

Andrea and Jill had caught up to me by this time, and we continued on our way. But all three of us were certainly a bit breathless from the encounter. Jill had apparently seen the situation coming and had yelled out my name as I was trying to slip past the three potential pickpockets, but I must have been so focused on them at the time that I didn't hear the warning. Andrea had been taken by surprise by it all. Both of them asked why I didn't just punch the mother, which was a good question.

"I guess I'm just too much of a gentleman to hit girls, even if they're thieves?" I ventured a guess.

"If it was me, I would have totally pummeled them," Andrea replied. Jill seconded this with a nod.

Oh well. Looking back, the only thing I might have done differently (besides put a hand over my pocket before the mother put hers) if I could handle the situation again would have been to add an extra "Vaffanculo!" Or "Fuck off!"

When I conducted a more thorough check of my pockets a minute later, I realized that my tourist map of Rome had disappeared. I don't know whether the map had already fallen out of my pocket previously or whether it was the one casualty of the pickpocket attempt, but it did amuse me to imagine what might have happened around the other corner if the mother had, indeed, stolen my map.

The three duck into an alley, then gather to see what loot they had acquired.

"What have you got, mama?" the nine year-old might ask.

"Lets see... uh... we have a... MAP OF ROME??? Ohhhh sonofa... we get caught by some stupid tourist and all we got was this stupid map of our own city???"

That mental possibility gave me a bit of a chuckle. The other humorous aspect of this, once I started thinking about it, was realizing that I had literally wagged my finger and chastised a thief in public. It was an action strangely similar to an incident that had occurred last year, on board a subway train in Barcelona. Apparently, one of my teachers at the time, a tall, jovial, dreadlocks wearing black man named Gerald, had caught an old woman with her hand deep inside a classmate's purse. He had locked eyes with that potential thief, then had wagged his own finger and warned, very coldly and sternly, "NO." That old woman had also relinquished her hold on potential loot and slinked off elsewhere.

When I had scolded my potential pickpocketer, I had done so immediately, without thinking. But somehow, that incident in Barcelona must have manifested itself in my mind unconsciously, because I had somehow repeated Gerald's actions here in Rome!

Ultimately, I don't know whether the happy resolution of this potentially disastrous sequence was due to my alertness, or because the three were just particularly bad pickpockets and I had been lucky. Maybe it was a combination of the two, but like I said before, at least it makes for a great story!

--

We eventually made our way up toward Piazza del Popolo, taking a route that brought us past the Spanish Steps again. This path took us on a higher elevation over the rest of the city, so every now and then, we stopped and admired the roofscape of the city, as well as the pretty architecture and the urban density (okay, so maybe I was the only one who took note of the density).

When we came to the short plateau above the Spanish Steps, a curious sight appeared to our left. Fighter planes, with colored trails blazing out behind them!

This, as I later found out, was part of the festivities for Republic Day, which celebrates the birth of the modern Italian republic in 1946 after the fall of Fascism. There had apparently been parades and official festivities somewhere earlier in the day, and the jets had been exhaling the red, white and green of the Italian flag... at least before they flew past our position. This also explained why most of the stores we ended up passing were closed. It was a public holiday! Of course stores wouldn't be open. Too bad we hadn't known this before we decided to make Saturday a shopping day.

We took a bit of a detour and sauntered through a park that surrounded the nearby Medici Villa. It was quite relaxing to stroll over the crushed gravel (not quite as good as the type in France, but still quite pleasant) and observe the numerous roller bladers, bicyclists, and even four pedal cart riders navigate their way around the sprawling green grounds.

After at least half an hour plus a sack lunch at the park, we continued toward Piazza del Popolo, the end of the axis from Vittorio Emanuelle II and up Via del Corso.

The plaza itself wasn't necessarily spectacular. It was a large potential gathering space with an obelisk in the middle--St. Peter's Square without the imposing colonnades and massive cathedral at its head. But was the endpoint of Via del Corso, so we ambled through and began looking for any stores on the prominent retail street that might be open.

Most, unfortunately, were closed (although we did get some great gelato at a place called One Bar). Eventually, however, Jill and Andrea were able to find a Sisley store open. An hour later, Jill had purchased a very nice jacket that she was in love with, and Andrea had bought a cute long white skirt that she would find something to match with later.

By mid-afternoon, we had made our way down Via del Corso and back to Vittorio Emanuelle II. From there, it was a stroll through part of the Roman Forum, down toward Circus Maximus, past the Santa Maria in Cosmedin church, and south all the way to the Pyramide metro stop, where we might find a Protestant cemetery I had heard about that contained the final resting places of such famous literary giants as Keats and Mary Shelley.

I'll let the photos illustrate the walk.

We finally arrived after quite a long walk, only to find the cemetery "closed due to fallen tree." That was bummer. I had been told that it was a fantastic place for some peace and quite and tranquil beauty. Glancing in, I certainly had to agree: it looked like one of those beautiful graveyards from a movie or book, full of vividly green shrubs and big, hanging willow trees. It also looked like one of those graveyards that might be extremely spooky to walk through at night, when the same beauty turns into eerie macabre in the moonlight shadows.

Though slightly disappointed, the girls were too tired to really do much by this point in the late afternoon. We took the Metro back home to rest, intending on coming back out later that night to visit a club or bar in Rome at least one night. But those plans fell through as well, so I ended up with the admittedly smarter decision staying at the hostel, getting a decent amount of sleep before an early wake-up call would begin the next leg of our trip, a stay in Florence and an exploration of the area around it.

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For more photos of Rome, check out my Facebook photo albums:
ROME [PART 1]
ROME [PART 2]
ROME [PART 3]