Shoulder Soldiers and Arab Radio

Okay, not going to lie…I love the Eurovision song that won. Which is embarrassing. But whatever.

Yesterday in Beer Sheva? Hot as a bat’s ass. But then again, it was also boiling in Jerusalem. Granted, it was a little hotter in Beer Sheva, but I feel like after you reach a certain point of discomfort, a few degrees doesn’t make a difference. Okay, maybe I had 6-inch pit stains when I would have only had 5-inch ones in Jerusalem, whatever.

Oh, the other night my roommate screamed in her sleep…nothing new…but this time she did it in Hebrew! She only started learning Hebrew in January, and already she can scream in her sleep in grammatically correct Hebrew! I wanted to wake her up and congratulate her.

Speaking of French, yesterday stepping off a bus in Beer Sheva I completely ate pavement. Just, BAM, on the floor. It was really embarrassing. The woman getting off the bus with me looked at me with a look of concern and said to me in Hebrew, “Tizahari…” (“Be careful”), but for some reason (the fact that I’m deaf and also a complete space cadet) I thought she was speaking French and had said, “Desolée” (“Sorry”). I thought she thought that she had caused my fall. So then I started explaining to her in French that it wasn’t her fault…..at which point I finally realized that the woman hadn’t been speaking French at all. The woman just kind of looked at me funny and then crossed the street very quickly to get away from me.

Anyway, getting on the bus to Beer Sheva (not the one I fell off of), I arrived just seconds before the bus was to leave. Consequently, there was only one seat left, in the back row, sandwiched between a bunch of sleeping soldiers. A couple minutes into the ride, the soldier on my left decided he wasn’t comfortable leaning on the window and sort of shifted his head a little more towards my direction. Slowly but surely, as he got deeper and deeper into sleep, his head found his way to my shoulder. I hate when this happens to me, even if it’s someone I know, but I felt bad because soldiers are notoriously sleepy so I didn’t want to wake him. I figured I’d probably end up sleeping on a stranger on a bus at some point during my army service and I would appreciate it if said member of the public allowed me to continue to sleep. So I said nothing. But at the very moment when he had finished transferring the full weight of his head onto my shoulder, he woke up very suddenly, with a strong jolt that the entire row of soldiers next to me could feel, completely mortified that he was now sleeping on a stranger.

The soldier, now with a bright red face, tried sleeping upright, and I ended up shaking from silent laughter. After a few minutes the soldier had forgotten his embarrassment and had dozed off again. Once more, his head began a gradual migration to my shoulder. It’s hard to describe what happened next in words instead of simply demonstrating it in person, but let me try: When his head finally rested on my shoulder, instead of jerking back in surprise and embarrassment like he did last time, he actually grabbed my shoulder and moved it to more comfortable position for him. He tugged my shoulder down a bit, then pushed it a little farther away, and then settled his head back down on it again. All very sleepily and with his eyes closed, mind you. It was a bit like he was fluffing a pillow, except I’m person. A person this guy doesn’t know. By this point I was dying of laughter inside. I took a look over at his beret and shoulder tag (which, before the soldier shifted MY body position, had been hidden from me), and it turns out…he’s was wearing the exact same beret and tag that I would be wearing! Haha….Oh man…..

Also, I got a new phone today (yeah, I dropped my phone in a toilet while brushing my hair….luckily the toilet was clean at the time….), and this phone has radio capabilities. Unfortunately, when I’m in my building I only pick up signals to the east of the building. It just so happens that I live over the Green Line, meaning that “East” is basically Arab central. So, without exaggeration, the only radio I have access to is a single station--in Arabic. I just heard them advertising a store and then the name of the city Amman, so it may very well be Jordanian radio that I’m picking up.

This bizarre song in Arabic came on advertising McDonald’s chicken gourmet, and I think I just shat my pants laughing.