Shout Out to the Roomies!

Well, today I just accidentally reminded myself why I stopped wearing khaki pants.. See, in high school I did not own a single pair of jeans, but I owned several pairs of khaki pants. Eventually I figured out that I was too much of a klutz to pull off light colored pants, seeing as I frequently sat in puddles of paint, in gum, in pieces of cake abandoned on benches, etc etc etc. So I made the move to jeans since they tend to be more forgiving with dirt….

Today, however, I decided to wear a pair of khakis. And I was doing great until lunch when I decided that eating tomato soup would be a good idea.

And then I totally spilled all over myself. Or rather, all over my lap. It looked like (excuse my language) I had just had the worst period of my life, or as if I had just given birth and immediately afterwards pulled on a pair of khakis.

Okay, actually it wasn’t all that bad. It was literally like one drop. But it was still really embarrassing. My family has this weird problem, like we always spill on ourselves during meals. I don’t know what it is, because we don’t eat like animals, we don’t eat any more quickly than the next person, we don’t eat particularly messy foods…but somehow we always manage to spill on ourselves at every meal. So, a question: is this a genetic condition? And is it curable? Maybe it’s just because my family is clumsy in general, and should probably avoid employment in nuclear facilities.

And, surprise surprise, this presents another thing for me to be worried about for the army: the uniform. If I get put into the army then I get to wear dark green, and I’ll be safe. But what if I get assigned to the air force or navy? Then I would have to wear khaki uniforms. And I know for sure that if you put me in a khaki uniform, Day One I’m gonna sit on something filthy. Without fail. Great, as if there weren’t enough things to be concerned about concerning enlistment…..


Also, can someone explain to me why when I leave a message at the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption IN ENGLISH, they call me back in Hebrew and then act all frazzled when I respond in English? I’m certainly not the only English speaking immigrant in Israel, and even the answering machine I left a message on had an English-speaking welcome message.


Lastly….. last night I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard my roommate babbling incoherently. Like, it wasn’t French, it was clearly the language of “I’m asleep and talking in my dream.” I smiled to myself, thankful that she wasn’t yelling in French, and then rolled back over to fall back asleep. And then a couple minutes later I heard quite a ruckus coming from the direction of the window.

Yes, dear readers, my roommate had gotten out of bed, STILL ASLEEP, and still babbling incoherently to herself, and had gone to our window. She was making a lot of noise because with her eyes shut I guess it was hard for her to find the cord to pull to lower the shades. But after a couple seconds of banging around ….

SHE CLOSED THE FUCKING SHADES IN HER SLEEP!


It was maybe the finest thing I’ve ever witnessed. It was one of those incredible, unbelievable, life-changing moments that I would put on-par with the moment when I arrived in Israel as an immigrant. “Is this REALLY happening? Can something so wonderful possibly happen to ME?” Yes, dear readers, miracles do happen even to horrible people like me, and I got to witness a girl who was completely asleep close window blinds in her sleep.

It was thrilling. I swear, if my life had a soundtrack at that moment “Awesome G-d” would have blasted, or some other Jesus-related song would have come blaring out. It was seriously an inspirational moment.

Once she finally got the shades down, she kept pulling on the cord because obviously in her dream she couldn’t tell that she had closed it all the way. Then, satisfied that she had closed the shades in her dream, she turned back towards her bed—and I could clearly see that her eyes were peacefully shut, and she was still saying sleepy nonsense.

I’d like to take this opportunity to express gratitude to G-d for all the roommates I’ve had over the years, from the one who screams in French and closes the shades in her sleep, to the Australian (who actually, by my roommate standards, was pretty normal), to the girl from Chile who would regularly scream, “AT ROTZAH SEX-O?” and could drink vodka like it was her job, to the girl whose laundry mountain I had to climb to get to bed and with whom I maybe exchanged a grand total of 5 sentences over the course of 6 months, to the girl who collected her poop in a jar and sent an old woman to the hospital when she whacked her with a revolving door, to the girl who lost a pizza in our room. Yes, dear roommates past and present, this is my celebration of you.