Auditory Alzheimer’s

Some people have a knack for recalling names & lyrics of songs as well as the artists who played them. I am not one of them. I have difficulty separating the lyrics from the music, which seem to be at a higher comparative volume. So when I hear a song I really like on the radio, invariably I get frustrated. So today, I thought I would take a technical leap forward and search the website for the song I heard this morning. I found the proper search link and sure enough there was a gap in the history. It listed the song before and after the one I liked but there was nothing there at the timeline I needed. Foiled again!

Why can’t radio stations announce the name and artist of each song before and after playing it?

Signed,
Auditorily Challenged

PS The title certainly applies to anything my ex has said to me.

Bessie & The Fountain of Youth

It was always a pleasure when Bessie came into my office. She was over one hundred years old and still full of life. She would regale me with stories of her youth and the insights she accrued over her lifetime. Her visits conjured up visions of how people felt when their grandmother would come over, although I could barely recall mine. She treated me like her favorite grandchild even though she had none. She related to me how she and her husband had decided not to bring children into this troubled world. It saddened me to hear this from such a wonderful woman, full of love and giving spirit. I imagined just how lucky her children would have been, had they been. Instead, Bessie focused on helping others in the nursing home, cheering them up, singing and enriching their day. When Bessie came to my office, she would always be baring gifts. Gifts she made herself. She painted vases and pictures. She even knitted booties for me as well as my wife (now ex).

For years, Bessie followed an unusually regular schedule. She would come in every 2 months to replace her contacts. Yes, I said CONTACTS! Apparently, her contacts would discolor very quickly. In the early years, I would attempt to manually clean them. Perhaps there were protein or lipid deposits that could be removed by physically rubbing the lenses. It was no use. I was never able to salvage the lenses and she had to keep purchasing expensive lenses.

On one occasion, I asked her what her secret was for such a long and healthy life. She was eager to tell me the wisdom imparted to her by her grandmother. There really is a fountain of youth, her grandmother said. Every morning one should wash the face with his or her own urine. I cringed. Then I recalled all the times I cleaned those YELLOW contacts. Then I became a little nauseous. I begged her not to continue this routine, at least for the longevity of the contacts. She agreed to try it for a while.

A short time later she died!

Gray M&M

A number of years ago there was a contest to find the gray M&M. The prize for having the dumb luck to open the right package was a whopping ONE MILLION DOLLARS (said in my best impression of Dr. Evil). Enter my teenage Californian niece. She was at sleepaway camp in the North East, when she opened that fateful package right before the eyes of her closest friends. Word spread quickly of this gifted child and her treasured discovery. There was singing and rejoicing among the daughters of Zion. The sun could not have shone brighter that day.

As the daylight waned and the girls sat around at the gazebo, my niece decided to show the crowd, one last time, the glorious Gray M&M. She held it up for all to see. Amidst the ooh and the aahs, something came over her. She simply said, “Oh, well. Who cares?” and she proceeded to eat it. Pandemonium! Horrified shrieks and screams of dismay rang out into the twilight. “Money isn’t everything”, she said. “Clearly you should be medicated,” they retorted. No one was able to sleep that night.

The electricity and buzz remained in the air the following day. At lunchtime, she received permission to get on the loud speaker and explain herself. Apparently, in California there is a store that sells all different colored M&M’s including Gray!

Interfaith Marriages

I know a few interfaith couples and all of them impressed me as extremely tolerant. I also noticed that they seemed happier with each other than other MO married friends. Could be a coincidence. Maybe the difficulties that they had to overcome to be able to join with their soul mate strengthened their bonds more than the average couple.

My cousin was dating a non-Jew for many years and was obviously in love. She faced objections from both sides, often bringing her to tears. Joe offered to convert but some brilliant brother-in-law said there wasn’t proper intent and that’s not good enough. She married him despite the objections and she has a wonderful family. To this day, I know she is still in pain from the conflict; still feeling alienated from a family that does truly love her. She feels unaccepted even when we try to include her in our get-togethers. I was too young at the time to have been involved with that incident but I am aware of its repercussions and the devastation she experiences on a regular basis. All this was the price she paid for wanting to be with the person she loves.

I met a woman named Ettie last month at a friend’s wedding. She is happily married to a Christian man. I felt I had so many questions to ask her about such a relationship but I did not, for the same reason I never asked anyone else I knew who had an interfaith marriage. I didn’t want to come across as judging or nosey. But I really want to understand their lives and I am truly happy for anyone who has found their soul mate.

What particularly sparked my thoughts was a book I’ve read by Israel Finkelstein about David and Solomon. I will write in a later blog about the details from the book. Apparently, the traditions ascribed to David & Solomon have changed and been remodeled to suit the times and achieve a certain agenda. Initially, early Israelites used it to justify the right of Judean hegemony then later toward religious and political reform. The interesting thing that Christianity did was, it took these traditions and made them universal. They claimed that Jesus perfectly fulfilled the messianic requirement derived from Davidic lore. He was supposedly of Davidic lineage (even though that line had died out centuries earlier) but his message was that of brotherhood of mankind and love to one’s fellow human. While I feel, the Christians and Jews have continued to use the traditions of David & Solomon for their own agenda and have strayed far from the original purpose, we do have to recognize the value of the lessons they derived from David and Solomon just as each of our generations learns new lessons from reinterpreting the texts.

With this in mind, I want to believe that our love of God should be able to be reconciled with our love of each other. When we seek to comprehend what God asks of humanity, surely the answer is to foster love and good graces rather than hatred and enmity. And while it seems to be human nature to create artificial boundaries that describe ‘us’ and ‘other’, perhaps it is time for humanity to create a more tolerant, more loving world. Don’t judge others who aren’t conforming to our standards and our vision of the way life should be.

LIVE AND LET LIVE.

Fry-Day

In an attempt to expose my friend (and office manager) to the finest Jewish cuisine available, I decided to treat him to Burger Nosh. Kosher Chef, the forerunner of Burger Nosh, was located by the boardwalk in the Rockaways. It became a regular hang out during my youth and I suspect those memories compounded by all the sun I received at the beach skewed my preferences for those classic burgers with the pickle-laden aftertaste. [To this day, no one has been able to replicate Kosher Chef’s special eggroll filled with Hungarian goulash].

It wasn’t a particularly busy afternoon in the store and I paid little attention to the few patrons sitting in their booths. I placed an order for the Big Nosh special, which came with fries and a drink, while Andy ordered the snack box. We waited patiently at the counter for some time. The fries were placed on the tray in advance of the burger. I plucked one off the tray but was halted by Andy who challenged me as to how I knew that it was my order that was on the counter before us. I was in a particularly giddy mood. Anytime I get to leave the office for fresh air, I become intoxicated. Being the only two people at the counter, I was sure the order was mine. I flippantly and defiantly remarked that “I don’t know and I don’t care!” Then came the tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a burly fellow staring down at me. “Those are my fries,” he said sternly. If only we could have harnessed the intense glow emanating from my abashed face, the energy crisis would have dissipated. I apologized profusely while the echo of Andy’s laughter rang in my ear. I wanted to crawl underneath a rock and disappear.

The taste of the burger assuaged my anxiety and once again my effervescence emerged. I saved one French fry and offered it to the man on my way out. He laughed and looked at my thin figure and said, “You need it more than I do.” One last apology and again the fry never had a chance.