Failure: My Summertime Tony Soprano Arc Was Nothing More Than Excessive Lunchmeat and Uncontrollable Anger

When I was a young boy, my grandfather taught me the most important lesson of my life. He was a weathered man, born and raised in the unforgiving wheat fields of Sicily, but even in old age, he had wisdom beyond his years:

"Zachary, I am going to tell you what everyone knows but no one has the heart to admit. Real Italians don't live in Italy anymore. They live in New Jersey. European Italians don't even eat chicken parm or cheese pizza with ranch dip anymore. They're a disgrace. Real Italians live in New Jersey, and they love deli sandwiches and they're all members of the mafia and they don't speak any Italian and they say words like gabagool and moozarell and manicot. Those are the real Italians. Oh, and they go to Costco and review chicken bakes and double chocolate chunk cookies."

My curiosity blossoming, I asked him what manicot was.

"I don't know what manicot is. Probably just pasta and cheese and other shit. But I know that real Italians are supposed to eat manicot and they're supposed to love manicot and they're supposed to bring manicot to every possible event and feed manicot to every living breathing creature at said event and they're supposed to say manicot all the time and never stop saying it ever. Manicot. Now you say it."

Manicot, I said.

"Manicot. Yes, manicot."

Wow. His words hit me like a brick. How was I ever so foolish to believe that a man who lives in Rome, eats Pollo alla Cacciatora, and is a fan of Juventus soccer is more of an Italian than a man who lives North Caldwell, NJ, eats Boar's Head salami, and worships New York Giants backup quarterback Tommy Devito? 

His words awakened something in me. I spent the next seventeen years studying the classics: MTV's Jersey Shore, NBC's The Real Housewives of New Jersey, HBO's The Sopranos, and anymore meaningful literature that I could get my hands on. Finally, at the age of twenty, I was ready for my summertime Tony Soprano arc.

It did not go as planned. I was imagining demanding money from local small businesses and running a fraudulent waste management company and murdering people (in the awesome way). What actually happened was that I ate so much so much Italian cured meat that my doctor told me that my health would be better off with a terminal illness, and when my family tried to stop me from continuing to purchase and consume said Italian cured meat, I screamed at them so violently and hatefully that they grew to resent my very existence.

For a while, I tried to pretend that everything was fine. This was what I wanted, wasn't it? But when the cashier at Sam's Italian Market recognized me by name, and then refused to provide me any more service on account of my declining health, and then called the police when I pistol-whipped him, I knew that I might have a little bit of a problem.

Welp. I guess I'll just have to wait until next summer and try out my DJ Pauly D arc.