'E palle d'o tenente

'E palle d’o tenente. It’s a blunt folk expression, and it means something precise: effort that serves no purpose. The lieutenant gives orders but answers to someone else, wears the uniform but doesn’t decide; and whoever is under him toils away on orders nobody explains. Thirty is the number of endurance — the long, daily, unglamorous kind. In dreams, thirty arrives when effort is poorly repaid. A job you put yourself into and nobody notices, patience kept with someone who doesn’t deserve it, a routine that weighs on you and gets you nowhere. It’s one of the most realistic numbers in the Smorfia, because it speaks of something that in dreams you feel on your skin more than you see. Two images lead here, and the second is perfect. The lieutenant. And the cross: the weight you carry every day, the one nobody asked if you wanted to carry. In the Smorfia, toil is never neutral — it’s light when you’re doing well, and it becomes an object when you’re just putting up with it. If thirty has come up in your dream, the question it leaves is uncomfortable and fair: is that effort taking you anywhere? The Smorfia doesn’t answer, and neither do we. It only signals that in your dream there was someone hanging on, and maybe for a while now.