Milk, Cookies and Osama bin Laden

If you want to feel like a jerk, explain Osama bin Laden’s defeat to a 5-year-old.

The morning after a band of brave Americans filled the face of evil with lead, I decided that I needed to explain the situation to Zev. Certainly, his entire school would be abuzz with the news; I wanted Zev to hear about it from me. You know, to mitigate the scariness of confusion.

“So, um,” I began, while Zev flipped through a comic book at the breakfast table. “There was a guy – like Haman from the Purim story, remember him? – who did some very bad things. He killed a lot of people. And last night, we got him. And now he’s dead. And we’re happy.”

Zev looked pained, as though wondering whether his Mommy was suddenly homicidal. We’re happy that someone is dead? Wow. I had better explain that.

“So, yeah. It’s bad when someone gets killed, but this guy was really, really evil. Like a Super Villain,” I said, pointing to his “Incredibles” comic book. “And we defeated him.”

“OK,” he said, sounding uncertain.

I was feeling judged, so I hastily tried to explain that I wasn’t the only person who was happy. I told him there were people dancing in the street in front of the White House, and that they were singing the national anthem and the President said it was an important moment for America and … and …

“Oh, yeah,” I said, suddenly remembering the email about heightened security I received from his Jewish day school that morning, “and also there’re might be police officers at your school.”

“Why?”

“Well, most people are happy, but some people aren’t happy. And the people who aren’t happy might try to attack us again,” I said because I’m an idiot, and that’s what idiots say to 5 year-olds. “But you know what, don’t worry about that. I’m sure they’re going to explain it all to you. I figured that you will be talking about Osama bin Laden in school today, and I just wanted you to be prepared. That’s all.”

There’s something in Proverbs, warning us, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.” What it should say is, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, lest you have to explain your glee to a child.”

I sent my kid off to school confident in the knowledge that he had know idea what I was talking about. I must have sounded nuts. But all was not lost, I told myself. Though, I had flubbed the conversation about bin Laden with Zev, his teachers would not.

No doubt, Zev’s kindergarten teachers will know better than I how broach the topic, and when they did so, my explanation would suddenly make sense to him. He’d realize I had simply been giving him the heads up so that when the class discussed this historic event, he would be able to discuss it knowledgably. There is nothing Zev likes more than to discuss something knowledgably.

“So,” I said when I picked Zev up from school that afternoon. “What did your teachers tell you about Osama bin Laden?”

“Nothing,” he said. “They didn’t mention it.”

“Really?!” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “What did you talk about?”

“Well,” he thought hard. “It was Coby’s birthday. We had cake.”

It turns out Zev’s kindergarten teachers knew exactly how to handle the news of the day: Silently. Osama was a kind of evil that adults can’t fathom; it was foolish to think a kid could. Children shouldn’t have to confront evil, whether in their lives or in a discussion at the breakfast table.

Cake, on the other hand, is always welcomed.

A Big Pregnant Golem

Gwaaah blurrghh blahbhhh Eat! Gwaaah blurrghh blahhhh Eat! Eat! More eat! Gwaaah!

Forgive me, carbon-based beings. I used to be human. But now, now I am pregnant. I am no longer like you, free-willed creatures of the Earth. I am more like a golem, a life form mindlessly bent on doing whatever it is my taskmaster wants of me.

And right now, my tiny taskmaster wants me to eat.

In Jewish folklore, the golem was given life by having the word “emet,” or “truth” written on its forehead – with the letters “aleph,” “mem,” “tav.”

The letters that have turned me into an anthropomorphic human-like substance are “A” “T,” “C” and “G,” the four nucleic acid bases that make up DNA. Far from the poetic beauty and suggested danger of the word “Emet,” “Atcg” seems like an exclamation from a Cathy cartoon, as in, “Atcg! I’ve outgrown my maternity pants!” Or, “Atcg! I’m never going to lose this baby weight!” Or, more often than not, “Atcg! I’m out of chocolate!”

People talk about the beauty and mystery of pregnancy – and it’s true. It’s a joyous miracle to house the next generation of humanity inside your body. But it’s also just plain weird. Your body, moods and predilections are all hijacked. For the better part of a year, you are at the mercy of someone else. Someone, you haven’t even met.

The tiny evolving stranger who is now controlling my every mood, this morning, demanded that I drink a glass of milk. I don’t like milk. I haven’t touched the stuff since childhood. But not only did I down the entire glass, I then ate a cream cheese and olive sandwich and packed a lunch consisting of – among other things – a cheese burrito, a piece of string cheese and a container of yogurt.

I’m guessing someone is need of a femur because this menu was definitely not my idea. I’ve never been officially diagnosed as being lactose intolerant, but suffice to say if I keep up this baby-mandated diet, I will no longer be safe around aerosol cans or open flames.

And it’s not just my food consumption that is out my control. My tiny puppet master pulls my strings to do all sorts of things: Visit the restroom in the middle of the night, or in middle of my commute, or – increasingly and quite abruptly – in the middle of a sneeze.

I’ve also been made to wake up for no reason at all. I’m not hungry or thirsty. Don’t have to use the bathroom. I’m just … up. Awesome.

I’m also highly moody. I can be the patient Earth Mother with Zev through his 15-minute long explanation of how catapults work, but if he takes even one second longer putting his lunchbox into his backpack I am going to LOSE MY MIND.

I’m as lazy as a basset hound one minute and as listless and jittery as a meth addict the next. I’m sensitive, insensitive, achy, fast-walking, angry-for-no-reason and perfectly contented – all at the same time.

I’m also unfocused, or rather, I’m extremely focused – but just on robots. I spend my free time surfing the Web for robot wall decals, robot crib sheets, robot lamps, a robot mezuzah (no luck with that one, unfortunately).

I don’t own a Roomba. R2D2 is far from my favorite Star Wars character. I didn’t even read “The Iron Giant,” until Zev came into my life, but now I’m all about mechanical creatures whose fate is tied to the forces that control it. Hmm, maybe this is less about nesting and more about an existential crisis.

Maybe that could be the premise of a novel. Or of a parenting book. I will make a note of it. But first, I will make cookies. I have no choice.

Gwaaah blurrghh blahbhhh!

2011 Calendars - Jewish-style

Since our tribe marks the passage of time on flimsy calendars provided for free by local Jewish mortuaries – and since those calendars start in September, we Jews miss out a ritual the rest of the Gregorian-loving world enjoys each year: Calendar shopping.

I found a few at my local bookstore that promised to teach me a new word each day.  A new word everyday! The only thing my Jewish calendar teaches me is what time the sun goes down on Fridays. That won’t do!

 As our people are never the intended audience for such ambitious collections, I felt it was incumbent upon myself to create a Jewish version of the word-a-day calendar. Of course, I’m lazy, so it’ll have to be a word-a-month calendar. Oh, and I made all these words up, so don’t, you know, use them in a job interview.

 Herein, your Jewish Word-A-Month Calendar for 2011:

Loved to Death

Sitting at my desk at my Jewish communal day job, I took a nice juicy bite of an apple. Too big a bite, my mother would say. A small bit of it evaded the search-and-smash mission of my teeth and headed down my windpipe.

Spastic coughing began, and, within seconds two well-meaning Jewish women raced toward my cubicle.

The first woman held water in one hand and held the other hand aloft, asking if I needed a good back-pounding.

The second woman insisted that what I needed was a chest-pounding. She also advised me to stand up.

No, insisted the first. Stay seated and accept the back-pounding.

On the contrary, said the first, being seated isn’t helping. If I can’t stand, then I should at least put my head between my knees (while still, somehow, getting blows to the chest).

While the two women debated the best way to prop me up and pummel me, the tiny bit of apple worked its way back up. I swallowed it, down the right pipe this time, thanked both women and smiled.

Like a modern-day Sir Isaac Newton, that apple gave me radical insight into forces greater than people had previously understood: Jews, I realized at that moment, are extremely annoying.

New York Remembered

I wrote this for a column that was published shortly after Sepember 11, 2001. With the anniversary coming up, I thought I'd re-publish it here.

She always smoked with the door closed, choking me in the jazz-club air of her tiny bedroom. Her mom bought cigarettes for her by the carton, so Julie wasn’t trying to keep telltale smoke in. She shut the door to prevent our secret escape plan from billowing out.

Two little girls of 17, bellies flopped down on Julie’s futon. Her stubby fingers tracing a map, plotting our trajectory from Southern California suburbs to Real Life. First, off to college – me in Chicago, her in Santa Cruz. Then New York. Manhattan. A giant, crowded city of possibilities. We’ll be roommates.

We have it all planned out. Inexplicable wealth. Amazing clothes. Successful careers in theater and journalism. Our favorite fantasy projects 10 years into the future, New Year’s Eve 2000, to be spent on the rooftop deck of our apartment overlooking Times Square. Me. Julie. A couple of bottles of champagne and a few men lucky enough to share our company. Manhattan glittering around us like a chorus line.

She drops the map, and I grab it to get a better look. It’s strange. Manhattan looks so small relative to anything in California. It’s not what I expected.

From Generation to Generation ... We Make Cock Jokes

I wrote this back in May for OC Jewish Life after reading A. O. Scott's Week in Review piece in the NYT. Totally meant to post it back then, but you know what slackers all us Gen-X types are. Anyway, enjoy...

I had no idea that I was in the midst of a midlife crisis until I read all about it in the New York Times. In fact, it hadn’t yet dawned on me that I was even in my midlife, but at 36, I guess the math kinda works out. And besides, when the media tells you you’re experiencing something – be it concussive xenophobia, a text-induced decline in interpersonal skills or an insatiable addiction to international adoption, you better believe you are experiencing it.

Desk Job

Poor me.

That’s all I could think, as I watched Hubby and a man I had never met carry my desk out of my house and into the strange man’s car.

Poor me.

Sure, it had been my idea to sell one of our desks on Craigslist – along with an office chair, a bookcase and a sleeper sofa (still available - $300 OBO!).  But seeing my (great condition!) Crate & Barrel Drake Desk go made me pout involuntarily at the man who bought it.