Bully

             

Let’s say you are a man. In the apartment below you lives a woman with two kids. In the past you’ve helped her write a letter to the local family court requesting a restraining order on her ex-husband because he is known to become obnoxious and a little physical when he drinks too much. You’ve also heard him scream at his very young children a few times when your neighbor, the mother, needed him to watch the kids while she was waiting tables at night.

And let’s say the court refused to hand the man a restraining order, and he can pick up the kids, drop them off, and visit them at the apartment downstairs. And here is a little catch. When he comes over, he parks his car on your side of the driveway that you share with his ex. He releases the kids at his own pace and sometimes even enters the apartment below to spend time with them, being the good dad that he is. And during this whole time, his car is parked in your spot.

Now, since you are a man, you probably would do something to end this situation. Maybe you will let it go once or twice, maybe even three or four times, since you are a nice man. But I have a feeling that after five or six years of finding yourself waiting in your car on the street for the man to move out of your  spot, you would probably decide to put your foot down and make sure the guy understands that he should park his car elsewhere.

Now, let’s do an exercise. You are a woman, about five two, maybe ten to fifteen years older than the guy. And you know that your neighbor has enough on her plate. What do you do?

If you are me, you keep your mouth shut to protect her and the kids. And maybe to protect yourself too, because you know the guy is a bully. You hope the man will apologize one day for making you wait for him to move his car. You hope he will say “hi” even once when he sees you. You wait patiently on the street for him to say “I’ll be right out of your way,” and sometimes you don’t even bother and you park on the street.

Until this happens.

 
You arrive at your apartment in your car, and the guy as usual is parked in your spot. He is getting the kids out of the car, collecting their backpacks from the back seat, and then, looking out to the street he sees my car. I give him a tiny honk. A really small one, because this time I am waiting on the other side of the street and I’m not sure he realizes it is me. The guy straightens up, and then he yells so I can hear him, “You really hate it, you really hate it when I park in your spot. You always have to honk.”

I am sitting in my car, watching him yell at me from across the street. And I am thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You are parked in my spot for the millionth time, and you accuse me of hating it? Of course I hate it, and I hate you too.”

And for some unknown reason, I decide to go full blast. Maybe because I am done being the quiet neighbor, the quasi-polite person I’ve tried to be. Maybe because I don’t like to be provoked. Maybe because deep inside I am a mean person. All I know is that no more am I going to be seething quietly in my car while you totally ignore me when I show up, ensuring that I know you are ignoring me, as you slowly walk to your car, get in, and slowly pull out of my freaking driveway. Because you think you are the top dog in the neighborhood and I am just a nasty woman who clings to her parking spot and causes your little highness some inconvenience. But I am not in this movie anymore, my reptilian brain announces to me. And as I finally get in touch with my inner monster, out of my mouth an avalanche pours out, uncensored, with all the honesty that I can mobilize into my exploding rage and pent up disgust for this bully.

I don’t recognize myself. From inside my car I say to him, “Yes I hate it, I hate it and I hate you. All these years that you’ve parked here. Never once have you apologized…” I don’t remember what else I say while sitting in the car, but a fleeting thought in my head tells me, just say it, whatever you want to say. I probably tell him to get the hell out of my spot and that I am sick of him and his stupid car.

I recently read that strong people use curse words, and I want to come across as a strong person.

The man finally gets into his red Audi, which I think his mama gave him, and pulls out of my spot. I park my car, get out and go to get my mail. He shows up again and, waving his arms in the air, he yells something at me. I turn around and screams at the top of my voice, “You fuckin' asshole, get the fuck out of here!” I don’t recognize my voice. It is high pitched and metallic. A strange voice coming out of a strange woman. But it feels good. So good to finally let it all out.

My neighbor, who was inside the apartment the whole time, finally hears the commotion and comes outside. She shoos him off and he leaves after calling me crazy several times. I don’t mind being called crazy. I know that men who can’t control women call them crazy. Yes, I am crazy. I am crazy for letting you asshole intimidate me for so long. I am crazy for letting any jerk treat me like I am nothing. I am crazy for staying quiet when a man says to me, “You didn’t listen when I talked,” if I dare to disagree with him or if I fail to understand every nuance of his meandering explanation about how something works. Yes, I am crazy, because I refuse to be agreeable and sweet and understanding when a bully provokes me. I am crazy because I hate to be ignored and stepped on and taken for granted and ridiculed because you are six feet tall and I am older than you are.
 
After the bully left, I regretted not insulting him even more. But even so, the Mexican guys who were working across the street said something I did not understand and then they applauded me. I turned around and bowed to them with my arms stretched wide, feeling such deep gratitude for their show of solidarity. They absolutely made my day.

Facebook for the Rich and Happy

I am sick and tired of seeing the life of the rich and happy pop up on my Facebook homepage. I am not poor anymore or terribly unhappy, but I’ve come to despise the happy faces that stare at me uninvited, advertising to the world the incredible fun they are having just because, let’s say, it’s Tuesday.

Most of us mortals live pretty mundane and insignificant lives. In a good way, I mean. We just carry on, going about our business. We get up in the morning, spend most of the day working, take care of the kids if we have them, make dinner, go to the gym, talk with family and friends, meet people, study something, take the dog for a walk, go shopping, watch a movie, and do it all over again the next day. You all know the drill.

But the rich and happy people who appear on my homepage when I decide to see what’s going on in the world, which petition to sign, where the next protest is going to be, or which calamity happened somewhere – they are clueless, totally clueless of what their very annoying posts are doing to me.

As a matter of fact, I started noticing – without resorting to scientific research – that the happier people look on Facebook, the more miserable their non-Facebook lives are. There is an almost direct correlation: happy face on Facebook, troubles at home. Now I catch myself worrying about my Facebook friends who seem too happy, their smiles too wide, announcing to the world how fabulous they are doing, going to Hawaii again or climbing Kilimanjaro.

Some cases in point: Not too long ago I realized that I was very annoyed at one of my Facebook friends. She is not rich, but she was happy. She used to post happy family pictures with friends sharing dinner at her home while playing instruments, beautiful pictures of her artwork, bowls of fresh organic vegetables collected from her garden, exploding sunsets she saw on evening walks with her partner. You see where I am going with this. I met her one day at a party and without much ceremony asked her what’s the deal with her Facebook posts. Why is she trying to make us all feel so bad about our mediocre lives, bragging about her beautiful family, beautiful home, and fabulous hobbies. I felt like a total loser each time I saw her posts. I wanted to unfollow her.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I am totally depressed. We need to talk.”

The next day she called and I found out that she was going thru a terrible crisis. She was considering going on anti-depressants. “Really?” I asked.  “Then what’s all these happy pictures about your perfect life?”

“What else should I put on Facebook?” She responded.

“Don’t put anything,” I said. “At least you won’t make us feel bad about our boring lives.”

The way she reacted made me realize that she did not connect her Facebook persona to her person. There was total disassociation between the two. Of course I do not expect her to confess her troubles to the world and ask for advice on this platform. But please, stop the charade, people.

My twenty year old daughter would say I am an idiot believing anything on Facebook. And she is right. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, maybe, but not on freaking Facebook. Because Facebook is its own universe where a picture is worth nothing at all.

Another case: I have a Facebook friend from the southern hemisphere. I will not divulge the country, let’s just say it’s a country that is still evolving, and when you happen to have money in that country, I guess it’s customary to show it to the world. I don’t know about his level of happiness, but from the pictures that show up on my homepage, I have to tell you that he lives a charmed life. He and his second wife go on vacation more than anyone I’ve seen, apart from the British Royal Family. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone on Facebook to check on how the latest executive order is going to destroy the planet or the lives of poor children and immigrants, and I see in front of me a picture from Paris, or Provence, or a famous painting hanging in a very famous museum, or a close up of a plate with food we see only in our dreams, or a photo from the window of a hotel room overlooking this Riviera or that ski resort where they go gallery hopping, or wine tasting or downhill skiing, or whatever the fuck they like to do. And the woman, she is always smiling above a cup of perfect cappuccino, and her eyes are hidden behind designer sunglasses. And it is the man who does the posting, tagging the wife for all to see.

And underneath the photos I read comments about how beautiful this place is, and how gorgeous that photo is, and fabulous this and that, and how happy they must be visiting that place – so many times the same bullshit, I want to puke. And then I think, they probably never have sex. Something must be wrong in those pictures. They are hiding something. He probably hates her children from her previous marriage, so he takes her on vacations to Europe, to Colorado Springs, to Boston and California, and spends thousands just to be away from home so he doesn’t have to spend one more minute visiting her annoying mother or listening to her scream at her ex-husband on the phone. I know it. Because the happier you look on Facebook, the more miserable your life is.  

I prefer living among mere mortals, who post a smiling face occasionally because something good did in fact happen in their lives. I want to know my friends are happy. But not THAT happy.

Passover

It is the morning after Passover and I am waking up with this song in my head:

והיא שעמדה לאבותינו ולנו, שלא אחד בלבד עמד עלינו לכלותינו
אלא שבכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו, והקב"ה מצילנו מידם

And I’m singing it as I get out of bed, without giving much attention to the words, admiring my voice and my audacity to sing without a worry in my heart so early in the morning.

After all, I’ve been singing this song on Passover since I don’t know when. And during my homemade Seder with a bunch of goyims friends who know nothing about this passover thing (unless they saw the movie), I sang it too, after telling everybody how much I liked that song.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit me. What a crazy song this is. Am I really saying this crazy stuff out loud and my brain is not short-circuiting when it notices the words? What type of person can wake up in the morning singing something like that and stay cheerful afterwards? Go have breakfast and look for the rest of the day with some sort of normalcy? This is not possible. Some molecules inside me must respond to the message even if the conscious me is not aware of it, because these words do have meaning, even if the meaning does not sink in.

And then another thought occurred to me: that all these years that I was singing these words in Hebrew I never gave them much attention.

But this Passover, I noticed the translation, and for the first time I realized the craziness of the stuff I was singing to my unsuspecting subconscious without ever checking in how this song affected it, and consequently, me.

Here is my translation of the song:

This is what sustained our ancestors and us. For it was not only one [enemy] who intended to annihilate us; but in every generation there are those who intend to annihilate us. And the Holy One blessed be He, saves us from their hands.

I don’t know about you people, but I finally understand Jewish paranoia. Every year I mouth this stuff without ever registering the words. But they must stay somewhere in the brain. So how do you expect me to be in this world and not be on guard every minute trying to detect who intends to annihilate me?

I don’t want to think like this. I don’t want to indulge my unconscious in this paranoia and fear. I want to free myself from this paranoid attachment to doom's day or the salvation from it.

Furthermore, counting on the Blessed Be He is the last thing I want to do. I’ve seen the lousy job he had done saving my ancestors from bullish goyims.

I think it is time to rewrite the songs and the stories we tell at Passover, or we are doomed to indulge in this paranoia until the end of our days.

I, for one, am going to think about new ways to do this Passover without harassing my subconscious, who has enough to deal with without worrying about unnamed goyims who want to annihilate me.

Adventures in grassroot activism

I have a problem with American toilets.

In Israel, privacy is a non-issue. When you walk into a store there is always a security guard who rummages through your purse or backpack looking for a bomb; people are not too shy to ask how much money you make or why you got divorced, and they even feel they have the right to look over your shoulder when you withdraw money from the ATM. But when you are in the toilet, no one knows what you’re up to.
Meanwhile in America, where people would kill or die to defend their privacy, you can’t find privacy in the toilet.

Let me explain: The women's bathrooms in my workplace don’t have real walls between them. They have plastic planks that neither reach the ceiling nor touch the floor, and the gaps surrounding the doors are wide enough to allow innocent bystanders to get a glimpse of what is happening inside. I have seen this abomination countless times around the country, restaurants, airports, movie theaters, schools and the list goes on and on.

I once wondered why privacy does not exist in American public bathrooms and found out that the goal was to prevent sexual activity in the toilet stalls. But as the famous case of the disgraced Senator Larry Craig has shown, it was precisely the space in the stall partitions that allowed for unmentionable shenanigans to occur.

So I was still at a loss. But since there was nothing I could do to change this architectural atrocity, I had learned to live with it. But there is a limit to the indignities I can endure and remain silent.

One day, while I was using the toilets at work, I noticed that the toilet paper dispensers had been replaced by new dispensers that sported a loose metal flap that covered the paper roll. I didn’t give it much thought until the moment I actually had to use toilet paper and realized that it entailed a struggle. The metal flap kept slapping my hand, every time I tried pulling on the roll. The next time I went to the bathroom, again I found myself fighting that metal flap, trying to outsmart it for an extra square of paper.
Now, had I encountered this ungodly dispenser in a movie theater or restaurant, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. We women suffer many indignities and this would be just another gift to reminds us of our place in society. But it was happening at my workplace, where I spend most of my waking hours… So I decided to take action.

First, I made some inquiries, and this is what I found out:
1. The new dispensers, which also included a different type of paper roll, were installed by the company who made them. They did not cost my employer a penny.
2. The new dispensers were installed to save time for the janitors. They were built for larger rolls so the janitors would not have to replace them as often. I beg to differ on this point since more than once I was stranded there without anything resembling toilet paper, but that’s beside the point. And yes, I accept your sympathy.
2. The new dispensers were installed to save time for the janitors. They were built for larger rolls so the janitors would not have to replace them as often. I beg to differ on this point since more than once I was stranded there without anything resembling toilet paper, but that’s beside the point. And yes, I accept your sympathy.
3. There were already a few complaints regarding these new dispensers. Apparently, people had to touch them to get the paper, and touching anything in a communal bathroom is icky.
4. I could email someone and express my concern and this someone could forward my email to someone else who may or may not do something about it.

Ah, the good old American way. Send an email up the chain, express concern – preferably without curse words, and remember to document everything and be ready to provide proof upon request – and then hope for the best.

This way of doing things may sound acceptable and may even be efficient if you were born into a system that respects rules and etiquette and you happened to internalize it. But not if deep inside you are still a raging Israeli. I was not going to fall into the email trap. One email here and there would get me nowhere in this bureaucratic labyrinth. I had to approach this problem with ingenuity.

I decided to circulate a petition among my female colleagues. It started with “We want our old toilet paper dispensers back,” and ended with a short list of “challenges” these dispensers posed. You may be aware that “problem” is a dirty word in American English. Here we only have “challenges” and “concerns.”

The response to my petition was overwhelmingly positive. Only two women didn’t sign it. One said she never signed petitions, and the other had no problem with the new contraption, bless her agreeable soul. All the other women were more than happy to sign and share their toilet paper horror stories. One woman described how the metal flap had torn her pants. Another not only confirmed that the new rolls were narrower than the old ones, but pointed out that they were also of a poorer quality. She then described an ingenious way in which one unidentified bathroom visitor rearranged the toilet paper in such a way that fighting to get it out would be less harrowing.

After I collected enough signatures to fill a page, I scanned my petition and emailed it up the chain along with some chosen anecdotes, encapsulated by positive thoughts and female righteousness.

That night I was sleepless with anxiety. Will I get fired for organizing a workplace toilet paper mutiny? Did I go too far with my demands? Would I be better off if I had kept my mouth shut? Was I creating new enemies?
At work the next morning, a stranger came into my office, asking for Galia. He was holding my petition. I didn’t know who he was and I was not sure how to respond. He was standing at the door looking at me. I wanted to duck under my desk. My knees were shaking.

I confessed that I was the person who sent the petition and begged for mercy. I was prepared to apologize, beg for forgiveness. Just don’t fire me. I’m a single mom, an immigrant. I’m saving for retirement. Please.

To my utter surprise, the man told me he was the building operations manager and that he had decided to bring back the old toilet paper dispensers. He said that the offending contraption had created unpleasantness and complaints throughout the building. He then promised me that the problem would be resolved in no time.

“So I am not in trouble for organizing a toilet paper mutiny?” I asked, feebly.

 “This is a free country,” he shrugged. “You can say whatever you want.”

I wanted to give him a big hug, but instead I just said, “That’s why I love America.”

I'm gonna let you go now

If there is one thing that some people say in this country that makes my skin crawl it is this line: "I'm gonna let you go, now..."

What do you mean you're gonna let me go now? Go where? And why are you letting me go already? What have I done to merit such abrupt ending, such finality?

Here I am having an uplifting conversation with you (on the phone), feeling close and cozy and basking in your attention, and suddenly you are going to let me go. Why? What happened? How did you become this distant person who is going to let me get out of your life without asking me if I am ready to do it?

Only a moment ago you were sharing the latest highlights of your life with me, and suddenly out of nowhere, without any apparent reason or warning, you are letting me go, shutting me out of your life until the next time you are going to bring me back into it, only to let me go again when you are running out of things to say.

And what if I am not ready to be let go? What are my rights when it comes to ending a phone conversation?

There is something so patronizing in this utterance: "I am going to let you go." Now you are the one who decides how long this conversation is going to last, you have more important things to do than spending the entire afternoon with me on the phone, you are done bestowing your graceful attention on me and I have to go back to my uninspiring life while you ride into the sunset.

Every time I hear this line uttered on the phone I want to smack the utterer in the face.

So person, If you need to go, just say it as it is: "Hey, I got to go, I got a ton of things to do, it was great talking to you, blah, blah, blah," but don't just let me go as if I am a fish on a hook who is getting a second chance. Don't put yourself above me with this subtle slap on the face: "I know you are hanging on to every one of my precious words, but unfortunately, I have to let you go, because it looks like you can't do this on your own."

Thank you for listening. You are welcome to stay for as long as you wish.

Gilad Shalit

I think I finally figured out the best shock therapy for low self-esteem. I would call it The Israeli Prisoners Exchange Method. All you have to do is count how many potential "martyrs" Israel is ready to exchange to get you back home! one thousand? one thousand and one? one thousand and twenty? one thousand and twenty seven! I think Gilad Shalit will never have to lie all alone in the dark again and feel the existential throb many of us sometimes feel in the dead of night "nobody loves me..." The Hamas Inc. can cry victory until hell freezes over, but I don't buy it. You can say that the rules of the game have been stretched too far, you can say that the Israeli government messed up, showed weakness, opened another Pandora's box full of bloodthirsty wanna be martyrs, surrendered to the Hamas, should never have released so many prisoners for one Israeli soldier, whatever, but I don't buy it. Because no matter how much the Hamas Inc. brags about victory, there is one thing it can't deny: That one Israeli kid is worth more than a thousand of them! Since the Middle East is built on the honor system, do not delude yourselves that this fact has gone unnoticed by those who adhere to the honor system. This is one sneaky tiny teeny unspoken fact no one on the other side wants to admit. But at night, when darkness falls, when the noise and the gun brandishing and the posturing dissolve into oblivion, the wanna be martyr will have to accept the fact that not only Allah remained indifferent to his/her sacrifice, even the Israelis no longer give a damn about it. Because there is someone much more important in the world than the death wish of the wanna be martyred hero and his ilk. Gilad Shalit is no hero. But those who fought for his release are.