Need to watch what/where I'm singing!

This past Shabbos, I was walking to shul with Tikvah. About halfway there, she asked if we could take a rest. The yard we stopped at had two large rocks we could sit on for a few moments. Tikvah asked me which rock I wanted to sit on. Suddenly I sang "I wanna ROCK, BAM!!!" Tikvah looked up in alarm, and asked me what that meant. I told her it was an old song that daddy used to listen to (by Twisted Sister), and since she had asked about the rocks, it just popped into my head and out of my mouth before I even thought about it.

We continued on to shul. Just as we arrived in the parking lot of the shul, Tikvah asked me why some people drive on Shabbos, and some (like us) do not. I explained how some people observed the mitzvah of keeping Shabbos more than others, just like some people keep kosher at home, but not outside the home, and some don't keep kosher at all, but we were still all Jews. And I said that in my earlier days, I used to drive to shul, but now I walked. Then again, the singing bug bit me, and I sang "Walk like a man, talk like a man..." (by the Four Seasons) Tikvah gave me another one of her looks. Oy. But more alarming, a shul member passed me on the ramp up to the shul. I could have sworn no one was around me before. How much of my singing did he hear?? Oh man, I need to muzzle myself before heading to shul again!!

That night I was curious; I went on YouTube and searched "I wanna Rock." Cool, they had the whole video on there. Tikvah climbed up in my lap and wanted to watch. Ahava either didn't like the music, or the video, and retreated to the kitchen. After watching that video, I also wanted to see "We're not gonna take it." Tikvah said the woman dressed very strangely. I had to tell her that Dee Snyder was a man, not a woman. She took it pretty well. But then at the dinner table I noticed that she kept singing "I'm not gonna take it..." Uh oh......

Writing, but for another blog...

I've been a bit quiet here, sorry. My more recent writings have been for BeyondBT. I made a post recently about Thanksgiving, posted here. I just finished another post and sent it in a few minutes ago. They'll let me know when it's up. I think it's a really good one, so I'll post a link here when they do so.

Hopefully now I can focus a little more attention back here! I'm sure I'll have some material to write about soon. Blogger-in-law is coming to visit from Israel, along with my wife's sister, and my first and only niece! Since they are coming, my parents-in-law are coming, as well as my other brother-in-law. That's (counting fingers) 10 people in our little townhouse!!! I better put in my reservation for a shower now!!

How to torment your mother...

I mentioned in this previous post that maybe I would post other ways I've tormented my poor mother. This one is my favorite! (which of course means it's probably pretty low on mom's list of wonderful life events...)

This happened about a year or so before my Bar Mitzvah, so I was 11 or 12 at the time. We were going to services one Friday night, for someone's Bar Mitzvah. We got about a mile down the road when my mother realized she forgot the Bar Mitzvah gift. As the president of the Sisterhood, she would present the Kiddish cup to the Bar Mitzvah boy. So dad turned the car around and home we went. Dad clicked on the garage door opener, and mom ran in the garage to the house. All the sudden we heard "Ahhh!" and saw my mom dance around a little bit. Trying to see what was going on, we looked more closely, and saw a snake slither out of the garage and into the grass. Mom composed herself, went into the house, and got the cup.

So now it's a little bit later, we are back on the road, heading to the synagogue. I look at my brother and give him the "shhhh" sign. I then slowly take off my leather belt. Then slowly, slowly, inch by inch, I push the belt up and over mom's sholder. Finally she glances down and... "AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!" Oh, that's what a blood curling scream is!!! Fortunately dad was able to keep from driving the car into a ditch during all this, and I of course got yelled at. (I think I saw a smile on dad's lips though... hmmmmm). I guess I'm just fortunate that the belt wasn't use to wack my hide after that!

Even now, almost 30 years later, when we go to the zoo with my mother (taking the kids) she'll pass on the reptile house and happily wait outside in the sun while the kids gawk at the snakes and everything else. Poor mom...

Who knows one?

There was a recent post on BeyondBT from Azreila Jaffe. (Side note, Ms. Jaffe wrote the book, "Two Jews Can Still Be a Mixed Marriage," a book Laya and I used before we got married to discuss several issues that we could see were approaching us, and I think it really got us off on the right foot in our marriage) Anyway, in her post, she discussed how she felt when she struggles to keep up, whether with the observant community, or with her children know that mom can't help them with their Hebrew homework.

The timing of the article was astonishing. Just two days before, I experienced the same thing with Tikvah. I've recently started taking Hebrew, and am working on learning the numbers. So I was sitting at the kitchen table reciting them. aH-aht, shtah-yem, shah-losh, etc. Each time I started, Tikvah would joyfully start to recite after me, but then overtake me, and reach es-air (10) before me. That includes taking time out to correct my pronunciation if I get something wrong on the way. That's when it hit me. I can take all the classes I want, study as much Hebrew as I can. Heck, I could even move to Israel and immerse myself in Hebrew (no, blogger-in-law, don't start getting excited, I'm talking theory here). But no matter what I do, Tikvah, and soon Ahava are always going to be ahead of me. I might have a slight lead now, but I've seen how fast they learn, once they start really working on Hebrew, they are going to rocket past me in no time flat. While I'm swelling with pride in my kids, I'm also starting to feel a bit of a deflated ego... Guess they'll be tutoring me soon enough!