A Tale of Fiestas and Drunken Widows

Hello Jews, pro-Judeans, and undecided lookers-on!

I think there is something about my karmatological map this week that says - "you will come on new stages in the most embarrassing ways possible". One such coming-on-new-stages incident involved me and my beloved Fiesta (I forgive you, Henry Ford, you antisemitic lout! On second thought, I don't forgive you!), which smashed into someone's Mitsubishi Lancer on a rainy, slippery Sunday early afternoon, as I was hurrying to make it to Beit El on time for a work shift (The new job and Beit El are the "new stage" for this part of the metablogophor. Please ignore the fact that they are not really "stages" per se. I mean, the world is but a stage, isn't it?).

[Important note: Israel is the only place in the world where Mitsubishi markets a model called the SuperLancer. The SuperLancer is the importer's idea. He bought some tin, made a lot of "Super"s out of it, connected the "Super"s to the "Lancer" on the back of the Lancers, probably added some cheap extras to the car and whammo - there was a new Mitsubishi model, all ready for the marketing. There is a lesson to be learned here. Maybe Tzipi Livni can use it to market Israel? "Visit SuperIsrael!" Hmmm...]

So anyhow, mayhem ensued. My Fiesta - my only property, my shiny steed - is all smashed up. I have had to ride the bus - can you imagine the humiliation!? Me, on a bus?? - for several days, and I am not sure where I'll get the cash to fix my silvery love. However, I hear being a beggar at the Kotel is good business. Someone told me he overheard one Kotel beggar woman saying to another "I only did 400 this morning". That's 400 NIS of course.

Luckily nobody died, including me. I wish this dreary weather would stop already. Ugh! However (get ready, I'm going to go all Jew-loving and optimistic on you), there is nothing like a car crash to tell you where you are living. I found out that if you close your eyes (I hope the traffic court judge isn't a reader of Kumah) and randomly crash your vehicle into another vehicle in Israel, the chances are 100% that you will run into a very good hearted, hard working Russian immigrant, who will not gyp you at all even if you are uninsured and whose diabetic father is being jerked around by National Insurance and whom you can perhaps help by using your connections!

Also, the Arab guy who towed me was very nice, but I am not sure now if that niceness was not simply his very clever way of getting me to pay more than I should have for his services. I must say though, the price he charged, while 50% more than the maximum I should have paid, is not bad for combined 100 km. towing and emergency psychological counseling. The guy could have gotten the same money by being a jerk and making me feel worse than I already did. Instead, he made me feel great, painlessly eased me into the denial phase, forcefully and convincingly insisted I could accomplish my goals (sentences like these are far more convincing coming from a life-living, wild-eyed Arab who isn't just repeating a stock cultural phrase he heard on TV a million times along with a billion other people, and isn't talking to you about "life", but about you and your life) told me I think too much and at the same time told me about his own life - his sister died when he was young because of a dentist's mistake, he and his brother took knives and set out to kill the dentist, their father followed them and told them if they didn't put the knives down he would finish with them, that their sister was gone, that was what G-d wanted, that people make mistakes, and they could only make things worse now... since then he has gone to the dentist to have his teeth treated and the dentist cries whenever he sees him - and this is the end of this sentence and paragraph.

The second embarrassing stage incident involves this interview on Galia Albin's show. Albin is the widow of very rich guy called Micky, who famously committed suicide while in police custody, being interrogated about some fraud/corruption charge, sometime in the 1980s (I believe Albin's suicide is the reason police Tegart forts have metal netting over the courtyards since then. So interrogees don't die if they jump from the third story onto the courtyard).

She was dressed like a working girl and had had something to drink before the show, but she was very sympathetic to me and A., the silhouetted guy who spoke before me, who has not seen his daughters for five years, since they were 10 months old, because of the vicious anti-male slant of this country's divorce laws, welfare establishment and general culture. We had to do a retake midway through the interview but nobody cued me that the tape was rolling again so I was talking to her in the thought that we were doing between-take banter. So when she asks me what help would I like to get for the Familists' legal service for divorcing men, instead of addressing the world and her audience, I am actually seen on TV telling her maybe we can meet after the show and talk about it... oy, the vey. The upside: I was very relaxed.

My lesson from both incidents is clear. However I will not share it with you because the enemy is listening!