And the world, or at least the Monkeyhippy (and anyone who has ventured into my house recently), rejoiced!
Come one, come all! My house no longer smells like a discount fish market on a humid August afternoon!
When I was a kid I was always involved with the yearly Hanukah play put on by my synagogue's Sunday School (yes, we Jews still had Sunday School even though all the other stuff was on Friday night and Saturday. Don't think too hard about it). And for about four of those years - there's a dearth in this area of literature, OK? - we did a play called "It Could Always Be Worse," which I think was based on a storybook by the same name.
My hallmark performance was in the role of the elderly village rabbi - quite possibly I had worked my way up over the years from being a child or farm animal. I vaguely recall rabbinically advising the lead character to go buy more chickens and goats and grandchildren (though clearly it would have been illegal to exchange money for the goats; those were probably gotten the old-fashioned way) and cram them into his already-overcrowded hut in order to learn to to appreciate the relative spaciousness of the hut when it contained only him and his original nine family members. I guess that right behind "do unto others..." in Jewish teaching is the wise old adage that "everything is relative."
While - surprisingly, I know - I did not consult a wise old village rabbi on The Problem Of The Fish, I still find myself now feeling a renewed affection for this quirky, creaky, cold old house. Those adjectives are, after all, so much more innocuous than "vomitously stinky."
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3 comments:
I rapturously rejoice with you! Congratulations on your newly acquired state of fishlessness. I wish you a home graced by nothing worse than the sweet aroma of dog farts.
Now, is this because the party responsible for the fish retrieved them, or because they all died sad, slow deaths in that filthy, un-oxygenated water?
Also, "It Could Always Be Worse" vaguely rings a bell for me (rings a bell faintly? rings a vague bell?). And I'm not Jewish. Perhaps my open-minded parents imported this bit of Jewish culture into our Quaker home?
I came for the "And the world", but stayed for the "vomitously stinky."
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