Oh, Those Italian Men

Apparently Italian men start being flirts early in life. This morning, one of my five-year-olds leaned out of the door of the classroom, grinned, and said, "Ciao, pupa." Now, I had heard the word pupa used on a talk show to describe this leggy, ex-model type, so I didn't know whether it had connotations of rather loose morals. I asked my Italian teacher, and she said that "pupo" means marionette. In Sicily, marionette shows are very popular and act out the songs of troubadours and scenes from Medieval courts. The word pupo, or its female equivalent, pupa, has come to be slang, however, for an especially cute person. Lorenzo is going to be quite the ladies' man when he grows up, I think.