And One I’m Not

Midway through slicing carrots for some pre-Yom Kippur chicken soup, I got careless for a few seconds, and sliced my left index finger instead.

Three stitches, a tetanus booster shot, and now I don’t even get chicken soup.

|  

Wisdom

There is a saying of Rabbi Hillel in Pirkei Avot that is often quoted:

“If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Just recently, though, I discovered that quote leaves out the first part of a longer phrase, and translates as gross simplification of the underlying Hebrew. The first two thirds, in alternate translation, holds a far different meaning:

“If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?”

|  

One Year

After we had been dating for a couple of months, Jess turned to me one morning and said out of the blue, “it’s nice to have a friend.”

It is. A year ago, I said yes and she said yes and we got married, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done.

So today is our one year anniversary. Though, to be frank, the whole anniversary thing always seems a bit odd to me, because our first date was on a June 20th a few years before we got hitched, and shouldn’t that time count for something, too?

Anyway, I think we love each other even more now than we did a year ago. Or, at least, we’re better at loving each other, having faced together another year’s happinesses and disasters, big and small, knowing that much more of each other’s heart and mind. We’re an even stronger team. And, to a possibly sickening degree, we still just like to be with each other all the time.

As is apparently traditional, we froze the top of our wedding cake a year ago. I put it in the refrigerator on Saturday, to thaw out in time for our having a few anniversary bites today. Jess has pointed out that this is basically the scene from Mother where Debbie Reynolds serves Albert Brooks three-year-old frozen cheese. And also that, by now, the cake has doubtless taken on the flavors of the spinach and gelato and chicken nuggets stored adjacent for the past year. All of which likely makes it totally inedible.

But, still, we’ll have a few bites, and it will be terrible, and we’ll laugh and have a wonderful time. It’s nice to have friend.

|  

Grass is Greener

A few months ago, we opened production offices for Keeper of the Pinstripes, taking over two floors of an older office building in the Garment District.

The listing for the space advertised a full-time doorman, which turned out to be at least technically correct. In the small, ten foot by ten foot lobby, there was a guy sitting at a little podium, all day long.

Strangely, though, he didn’t check IDs, direct visitor traffic, or coordinate freight elevator traffic. Mostly, he didn’t even acknowledge anyone else’s presence. He just stared into space, and slowly worked his way, for hours at a time, through the daily sudoku puzzle in AM New York.

When we first moved into the building, I thought, this guy has possibly the worst job in the entire world.

And now, neck deep in both films, as every problem with either winds up on my desk, I think, I wonder if the guy might be willing to switch with me.

|