Divisions of the house, conceived politically, settle an ideological argument practically; while photographic spreads, fixed in a preconceived ratio, serve the gender divide masterfully.

But the aforementioned buttoned-down foreign jeans, now joined by the casual Italian jacket, bring the expenditures on both sides of the clothing ledger into balance.

Buttons, as ornaments or seals, have been discovered in the Indus Valley Civilization as far back as c. 2800 BCE.

Functional buttons for fastening clothes appeared first in Germany in the 13th Century.

In 1851, here in the the Americas, Elias Howe received a patent for an “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure”.

Perhaps because of his success with the sewing machine, he did not try to market his zipper.

Many decades and much refinement later, the zipper graduated from boots and tobacco pouches to clothing.

In the 1930s, a sales campaign began for “self-reliant” children’s clothing that featured zippers.

By 1937, according to French fashion designers, the fly had beaten the button in the battle of fasteners for men’s trousers.

Much closer to home, racing “time trials” on a pair of American jeans consistently break the one-second barrier;

Whereas the brand-new, slick-buttoning, high-fashion Italian Formula One racer crossed the jean’s finish line in just under three minutes.

Helps, though, if the photojournalist is awake enough to save the crop of hair.

Or, “Clueless, Just Take the Euro!”

Eurospin Giveaway, apparently, works this way: a certain supermarket customer, randomly passing through the checkout line, is offered an immersion blender for a Euro.

When U have an uncertain Italian student, who is basically flunking out, the whole transaction goes to pot: first, the clerk tries her hand in Italian; then, a customer in broken English takes a spin.

Finally, in mock-exasperation, she exclaims “Just take the Euro!” The one, apparently, she has been trying to hand me, lord knows why, for some time.

And with that financial exchange, apparently, the conversational exchange is completed.

“Do you know what just happened?” Reb asks as we are leaving the store. “Of course not,” I reply in my best student voice.

Only when we get home and read the printed receipt does the clue finally arrive: “Frullatore ad immer” (1,00 Euro) is printed out below the “Subtotale.” In other words, the immersion blender was at the bottom of this language lesson all the time.

“Dementico,” naturally, means “I forgot.” For us the aged, though, that cuts too close to the bone.

“Non recordo,” in the course of things, means almost the same thing: “I do not remember.”

Tenses, however, are tougher. As I learned, in applying Reb’s lesson, when forgetting about the future.

My solution: stick to what you know, using hand gestures to signal backwards or forwards.

Reb laughs at the joke, while flunking me on Language Lesson 2.0.