ArcaMax

On a typical day, I will probably get about 30 spam emails. Most of them are for diet pills, a few are for magic cellulite cream (are you noticing a theme here?), and occasionally I get one from a Nigerian prince letting me know he has a million dollars for me if I just give him my bank account number to transfer the funds. Of course, I never fall for the Nigerian prince scheme, but I have bought the cellulite cream more than once.

Then all of a sudden, I started getting a bunch of spam emails that were distinctly different from all the others.

"Hey honey, I'm having a weird thing with my email," I said to my husband when he got home from work.

"What weird thing?" he asked.

"I've suddenly started getting a lot of spam in Italian."

"Why is that weird?"

"Well, I don't speak Italian."

"Maybe it's because you like lasagna?"

I shook my head.

"I don't think that's it," I said. "Regardless, I don't know how to stop it."

"Just unsubscribe," he said.

"I don't know how. It's in Italian."

I tried to think if there was anything I had done that would cause me to get emails in Italian. No one in my family is Italian, I hadn't traveled to Italy or signed up for Italian language lessons. I didn't have an Italian pen pal and hadn't visited any Italian websites. I hadn't ordered excessive amounts of pasta or sauce online. I did have something of an addiction to gelato, but that secret was just between me and the ice cream scooper at the gelato place at the mall.

There had been a short time once when I was getting emails in French, but that was because I had ordered something from a French website, and I speak a little bit of French, and maybe also because I like french fries and like to get French manicures. Regardless, I was able to translate them enough to unsubscribe and stop getting them. But even though I used Google Translate and was able to decipher some parts of the Italian emails, I still couldn't figure out how to stop them, or why I was even getting them in the first place. Interestingly, many of them were for Italian diet pills and magic Italian cellulite cream, which made me realize even the Italian spammers think I have a weight issue.

While I was pondering all this, I got yet another Italian email, which I translated and learned was from an Italian prince notifying me to say I had won a villa in Italy, and all I had to do was give my bank account number to cover some minimal taxes. I thought about putting him in touch with the Nigerian prince so they could compare notes but decided to delete the email instead.

"I think I know what to do to deal with these Italian emails that I can't read," I finally said to my husband.

"Are you going to block them?" he asked.

"No."

"Are you going to send them to your junk mail filter?"

"No."

"Then what are you going to do?"

I shrugged. "I'm going to learn Italian."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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