In a few weeks I hop on a plane to start teacher training in England. In the meantime my mother has been barging into my room about five times a day screaming about some errand we need to run before September. Everything is an emergency to her, like she has no concept of time or of importance: "DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH SOCKS FOR ENGLAND?! YOU NEED SOCKS! WE NEED TO GET SOCKS TODAY!" I tell her that I have a lot of socks, but I could get some more in the next couple of weeks. "YOU REALLY NEED TO GET THIS DONE!" Okay, I tell her, but even if I completely forget it's not like they don't sell socks in England. Then my mom calms down for about five minutes, after which she flings open my door and starts screaming her concerns over whether I have enough underwear.
Still, she thinks it's a lot better than the time I moved to Israel (when she would barge into my room every two minutes). And I have to agree that it's better than Israel just because I'm so sick of the Jews at the moment. (Being a member of the tribe via my mother I'm entitled to say things like that.) My brother David* is home for the summer between finishing yeshiva in Israel and going to rabbinical school in September, and literally everything that comes out of his mouth is about what "we" believe. It's never "I believe" or "Chabad Jews believe," but always a "we" that includes my mom, my brother Josh* (who has at this point pretty clearly established his allegiance to the pope), and me. My Christian father is apparently allowed to believe whatever he wants. I've given my religious beliefs a lot of thought, and for someone to insist that I believe something just because I happen to have been born to one Jewish parent, and this one Jewish parent happens to be my mother, well, it makes me want to eat my own face.
If you care to know, here's what I believe, and it ain't really Judaism:
1) Don't be an asshole.
2) God exists, but don't get hung up on the fact that other people may have a different understanding of God.
3) Be grateful and express your gratitude.
4) "Can" does not equal "should"
5) Go forth.
6) Be awesome.
Amendment 1) Put some goddamn pants on.
Amendment 2) Learn to shut the eff up.
Amendment 3) IKEA is an acceptable place to purchase any/all furniture, except for bunk beds.
And, if you care to ask, the tenet I feel most strongly about is Amendment 3.
But David doesn't really care. David is too busy insisting that his name is no longer pronounced "DAVE-id" but rather "duh-VEED." DuhVEED's religious beliefs were especially vomit-inducing yesterday when our family went to a barbecue. We've known the hosting couple since we were little, and yet when it was DuhVEED's turn to be hugged by the wife there was an awkward pause and even more awkward explanation of the fact that DuhVEED no longer hugs (or even shakes hands with) women except for his mother and sister. Unable to bear the uncomfortable silence that followed and desperate to make this woman not feel so hurt, I loudly blurted out to her, "But I can still hug you!" Which, let's be honest, is weird even for a different, normal person to say, let alone someone like me who dislikes hugs to begin with. Loudly advertising a sudden passion for hugs made me feel like a creep, like I was some kind of a zombie Care Bear lurching forward to force a hug on a screaming, innocent civilian.
On the plus side, Josh was there since he was visiting us this past weekend with my little niece (she's one). I always feel awkward at parties, but after shouting out my demand for a hug I pretty much felt like my best social option would be jumping into the pool (Note: I cannot swim). The next best option, and the one I chose, involved picking up my niece and carrying her around the whole time so that people would talk to baby Maria instead of me. For a while it worked like a charm, but eventually I got sicked into a conversation with a woman, yet another person who has known me since I was a little girl, but who, even when I was a little girl, Ive always considered really strange. To put it lightly, she's in love with Jane Austen. To put it strongly, sometimes I think she might be so in love with Jane Austen that she thinks she actually IS Jane Austen. I really think this woman is one moment of weakness away from putting on an empire-cut dress and gossiping about the incomes of eligible men, creating amusing and witty characterizations of social-climbers, and dying young. When she started our conversation I counted the number of sentences it took to get her to the topic of Jane Austen, and she managed to reach it on her third. Hi, how are you? What are you up to? Oh, then you should read a lot of Jane Austen before going.
I wonder if, as she's listening to other people talk, she silently plots how she can get the topic to change to Jane Austen in the fewest words possible, as though any other topic of conversation would be as wasteful as discussing what to make for breakfast tomorrow when today's the last day before the Apocalypse. It made me wonder if, in spite of her being a native English speaker, this woman had a limited vocabulary when it came to non-Austen topics, so much did she remind me of how in Israel I frequently tried to steer conversations to topics that my limited Hebrew vocabulary actually had a few words for (mostly classroom and education words, and the phrase, "I have a venereal disease"). It also sort of reminded me of DuhVEED, who, even if we're talking about mathematics or Tibetan Buddhism, always manages to change the topic to something that the Rebbe said. ("Linguistic recursion? That reminds me of something the Rebbe said...") And, unfortunately, it's always these kinds of psychos who get their way in directing conversations.
But you know what? Joke's on you, bitch, I actually like Jane Austen. I'm happy to talk about her and her books. In fact, just this week I read "Mansfield Park." On Saturday I was babysitting Maria, and she started shrieking while I was reading it. To try to quiet her down, I started reading to her from the book, even putting on silly voices and accents. Well, maybe needless to say, she didn't really enjoy it and I had to swap out Austen's "Mansfield Park" for Guarino's "Is Your Mama a Llama?" to get the screaming to stop. I thought this was all very silly, so I told this woman I was talking to all about it, and I laughed about my failed attempt to give the next generation a passion for Austen. I thought she might find it silly, too. Not a brilliant or seminal tale, but worth a slight chuckle when told by one Jane Austen fan to another.
Instead, the woman--there's no delicate way to put this--started freaking the fuck out, with a look of horror in her eyes usually reserved for Satan: "SHE'S TOO YOUNG TO APPRECIATE AUSTEN!" She fumed and fussed and I thought she was going to have a stroke right then and there, so great was my offense to the venerable Jane Austen.
I'm not really sure what Jane Austen would say about how you're supposed to respond to someone who is clearly insane. Wanting to say something like, "Are you for real, lady?" I just sort of mumbled, "Yeah, you're right" and took a step back, mercifully bumping right into one of Josh's many friends that I feel entitled to marry and who wanted to fuss over Maria. I mean, I think Maria is a genius because I ask, "Baby girl, where's your nose?" and about 50% of the the time she actually points at her nose. Or at least near her nose. But did this woman honestly think that I expect my little niece to appreciate the intricacies of manners and society from 200 years ago? I mean, Jesus, I'm 23 and even I sometimes don't understand what the fuck Jane Austen is talking about.
People, and by people I mean my parents, often ask me why I hate parties so much, and this is exactly why. This is EXACTLY why I avoid polite company. Because every time I try to crack a harmless joke or tell a sort of jokette anecdote to try to make the agony of social interaction slightly less agonizing, someone thinks I'm insane and unfit to be around children.
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