Speaking Of Dead Virgins...

Dateline: The Italian deli down the street.

The bent-over elderly Italian gentleman behind the counter peered at me over his picturesque wire-rimmed glasses.

“You want what?” he asked incredulously, in a charming accent.

“Parmesan rinds,” I repeated. “Do you have any?”

He shook his head -- not in negation, but to indicate mystification. Then he went to consult his equally elderly but less stooped compatriot, who pointed to a jar behind the grating machine. He also said not to charge me.

No, I didn’t take them all. I know their street value even if those lovely men didn’t, so I only asked for the handful I needed to cook with today. They’re simmering as I type this.

But Auntie, you ask, and quite reasonably at that. What does this have to do with virgins, dead or otherwise?

I’m getting to that.

This is about a non-existent tweet, with a spoiler for your own dotage.

Of course I was going to tweet about it all, but I couldn’t remember the name of those gnarled little imps from Italian folklore. That’s not a problem, because I have a reference book on European fairies and goblins and elves oh my.

Then I couldn’t find the book. (If you’ve seen my bookshelves, you know.) Then I couldn’t even remember the actual name of the book to ask Robert to find it for me.

This is the spoiler alert: All those jokes about old people forgetting stuff, that’s real.

You’ll see.

Now don’t start with me. Yes, I Googled. I can give you all sorts of links to the Italian rock band “Goblin”.

So I figured I could write the tweet using an imp from another country. I found Iratxoak, which was pretty cool looking, and then I found Kyöpelinvuori, which was way cooler.

The problem is that Kyöpelinvuori is a place, not an imp. It’s a Finnish ghost mountain supposedly haunted by the spirits of virgins who die young.

I can’t use that. Sigh.

I’m going to go tweet about the weather now. It was in the high 80s again today.