Did you know?

Campari fountain in Brunate, Italy.
It would be cool if Campari flowed from the taps,
but alas, it's just water.

On one of our first dates, Alberto mentioned to me that the office he works in is just down the street from the Campari corporate offices in Sesto San Giovanni, a town on the northern edge of Milan. I'm not sure how this came up in conversation. My memory often fails me for details like this, but there were probably cardboard Campari coasters sitting under our beers, or those small cocktail napkins with the Campari logo on them on our table. These things aren't so uncommon in Italy.

On one of our subsequent dates, similar circumstantial settings prompted Alberto to again mention that the Campari headquarters were near his office. Maybe he forgot he had already told me. Perhaps he was nervous and grasping to make small talk with this foreign girl that he somehow ended up taking out for drinks on Saturday nights. I probably nodded politely and smiled. I probably didn't say something along the lines of "why yes, I believe you have mentioned that" until the third or fourth time he told me, and my response didn't border on something like "dude, you've told me that about 100 times already!" until we'd been dating over 6 months. I'm still not exactly sure when he picked up on the fact that he had already made this point clear and it became a joke to him, telling me again and again, just to see my reaction. He's really good at playing jokes and he often gets people to believe even the most absurd fictitious stories he's telling. So when I finally realized the joke was on me, Campari became our joke, and has been ever since. Now I can't see anything with the Campari logo without a bemused smile crossing my face. And truth be told, Campari makes a damn good drink.

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