...and that's why people in New York don't smile.

As of last Wednesday, I’m living in the one place on Earth I’d never thought I’d be living: 750’s BC Mesopotamia.

Oh wait. No. Just New York City.

I’ve never been one of those people who is in love with New York. While some young people (namely  the geriatric teenagers on “Glee”) have romantic visions of New York, of not getting mugged before their certain stardom on Broadway, I can’t think of one disaster film/alien film/whatever film featuring the complete and total destruction of New York City that did not cause me to cheer. On what we could consider a good day for my relationship with New York City, I simply don’t think about New York City.

But there’s a particular program I wanted to do that just happens to be in New York, so…here I am. Writing this from my room in Manhattan. During the interview process the program people asked me some questions about my thoughts on New York and my motivation for applying to a program in New York in particular, wanting to ensure I hadn’t applied to this program simply for an easy/safe way to move to NEW YOOOOOOORK. I didn’t know how to properly convey to them how deeply this was not going to be a problem.

But now that I’m here I have two options: 1) I can make damn well sure that everyone in New York knows I hate them simply for being New Yorkers, or 2) I can try to counter some of the things I dislike about New York to make the city better for me and (hopefully) slightly, and in perhaps a completely unnoticeable way, better for others.

Armed with the naivety of the very characters of “Glee” who piss me off (for many reasons, but mostly for their complete lack of student-teacher boundaries), I decided I was going to smile at people for no reason. With the expertise of 12 hours in New York, I decided the best way to fix New York was to march to the bus with a hideous smile plastered on my face. “HELLO,” my face said, “I’VE HAD A STROKE!”

And so, looking slightly happy and slightly constipated, I got onto a bus. As it trundled down the road to the train station, I stared at the window and thought to myself, “There are people everywhere. Everywhere. So many people. Oh my God there are too many people. Why are there so many people? New York is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone ever.” But I continued to smile.

The bus stopped not too far from one of New York’s seemingly ubiquitous Payless Shoes stores (New Yorkers must have more feet than real people?), and a man folding a table was right outside the window. Judging from the intense look in his eyes, this was no ordinary table. This was the table the prophecy had foretold. This was the table that has been promised to—OH MY GOD NOW HE’S LOOKING AT ME.

Perhaps encouraged by the near-permanent forced smile on my face, the man retained eye contact. I say eye contact because in English we don’t have a word for an ocular Star Wars tractor beam. No, I must resist. Or at the very least, I must stop smiling as that appears to be the tractor beam’s energy source. The man kept staring. Staring to the point where people around me noticed and commented. The man kept staring, and I couldn’t decide between poetically putting my hand up to the glass as if to simultaneously and fruitlessly reach out to him and make a comment about the impossibility of ever being together, or simply disintegrating on the spot.

I looked away, hoping that would end the staring. Curiosity got the better of me, so I turned my head slightly to see out of the corner of my eye. Let’s see if he’s still—ohp, he’s still there. Staring at me. Oh God. What do I do. He’s still staring WHY IS THE BUS STILL STOPPED?? Jesus…has time stopped? Is that what’s happened? Is this what I get for smiling at people in New York?

The worst part of the staring is that I couldn’t tell if the guy was angry about my smile, encouraged by my smile, shocked by my smile, or was just staring at me because something was hanging out of my nose. All I know is that I smiled at a stranger in New York and in return received a stare that combined the essences of the songs “Some Enchanted Evening” and “I’ma cut you.”

 (It’s actually a thing.)

…and that’s why people in New York don’t smile.

.

You don't know me but I've been in your bedroom.

The other day at a party I met somebody new. I shook his hand as we both assured each other that it was lovely to meet, and suddenly a horrifying wave of realization came over me.

I’ve been in this guy’s house. And he has no idea.

I’ll spare you the details so as not to incriminate anybody, but let me just assure you that I was there legally, with a few other friends who were there legally. We needed air conditioning as it was the middle of summer, this guy’s house had it. Beyond that I won’t say anything.

Normally the first few sentences with new people are totally easy. You can ask about where they live or what they do, a simple exchange of facts before the difficult task of meaningful conversation needs to start. I wondered if he wondered why I was so rude and didn’t ask him these things, but then I thought it was probably infinitely ruder of me a few months ago when I read through his job’s paperwork that was sitting on his kitchen table. And no one wants to hear a stranger say, “I live in Cheviot Hills, but I won’t ask you where you live because I already know. And I love what you’ve done with the place!”

I had genuinely no idea how much information I could politely be assumed to know about this guy, who was after all a friend of a friend. Normally friends talk about their other friends, but I was so paranoid about the fact that I had been in this guy’s house that I made a mental note to just pretend like his name had never been uttered by our mutual friend. It reminded me of being a freshman in college, when overly enthusiastic dorm mates friended each other on facebook before we even arrived and when we met in person we had to awkwardly pretend like we hadn’t studied each other’s facebook pages. “Oh, wow, I didn’t know you also liked Liverpool FC,” you’d recite after someone responded well to your very obvious and awkward attempts to get the conversation to turn to this mutual love. Except knowing things about a stranger because you’ve been in their house without them knowing is less socially acceptable and exponentially creepier.

The conversation was very interesting. We talked about something I knew we would talk about, because I already leafed through books on it from his personal library. And as eager as I was to continue the conversation, I found eye contact near impossible because I knew that he didn’t know that I knew what level of grime he has in his bathroom (relatively minimal for a guy). God help me, I know where he keeps his shampoo. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him while screaming, “I HAVE PEED IN YOUR TOILET! ARE YOU OKAY WITH THAT?!”

This was definitely some kind of punishment for my trespassing. I had literally no idea what to do with my eyes or my hands or indeed any other part of my body. I wanted to drown myself in the party’s sea of Harvard graduates. I wanted to tear off all my clothing in repentance while screaming, “I HAVE BEEN IN YOUR HOUSE—AND I AM SO SORRY!!!!!” But instead I just stood there hiding behind a red solo cup of Coke.

I am wondering, should our paths ever cross again in the small town that is Los Angeles, at what point I am required to disclose this information. But I’m kind of hoping I’ll die before it comes to that.

I've reached some new lows.

Let’s get one thing straight, since so many people pity me when they hear I’m a lone tourist. I love it. Until I find a traveling companion who is just as vile as me, I prefer walking around foreign cities by myself because it’s the only time I can walk around publicly belching like a cheap prostitute without consequences. And people who burden me with oppressive hospitality rob me of this joy.

You know what I mean by oppressive hospitality—the most I want from you for breakfast is a finger pointing me to the nearest McDonald’s still serving breakfast. I appreciate your effort, but your three-course breakfast that you watch me exhaustedly cram into my mouth like a chore under your eager, almost evangelical eyes is about as welcome to me as an extended tutorial with my professor who wants to talk about nothing but the golden age of British bus travel.

This is how I ended up spending 5 ½ hours alone with a 40 year old on an internship. See, I was in Geneva for a job interview. My host (and potential boss) had offered to find someone to show me around Geneva on my free day, and not wanting to seem like the anti-social bitch that I actually am, I pretended that this was a fantastic idea—thinking it’d be a brief lunch and visit to a church or museum or whatever it is you’re supposed to see in Geneva. Instead, in an act that gets the award for Most Misguided Act of Hospitality of the Year (Runner Up: Not allowing me to withdraw cash from the cash machine), my host arranged for me to spend the entire day with a complete stranger, and a weird one at that. A man whose first stop on our tour was an English language bookstore, so that he could spend an hour looking for a French dictionary for himself.

And I didn’t even get the job.

When I first met him there was a glimmer of hope when I detected his Midwestern accent. This hope dissipated, about as quickly as a fart caught in the early stages by lowered car windows on a freeway, when I realized his accent didn’t have the same, almost Swedish, sing-songy quality of most Midwesterners, perhaps the chattiest folk in America. Instead it was the gruff, monotone mumble of a defective Midwesterner, like one with a flipper for an arm. He reminded me of the impressions of Louie Andersen saying “Chicken, donuts, cheesecake…” that my brother and I used to do.

I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the conversation going for three hours, even with the occasional awkward silence, particularly when I gave correct navigational instructions that he ignored in favor of just wandering around like a retarded puppy, followed by a sullen me who occasionally offered a weary, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we need to turn right.” Followed by a passive aggressive, “…like I said.” But, as I said, we had three hours of the wonkiest conversation even I’ve ever experienced. The last 2 ½ hours were covered by my occasional murmurs of “Mm…this is a nice neighborhood. Is it known for anything?” And his brief, otherworldly “Yeah.”s.

But no matter. At least I got a hug out of it at the end, and you know how much I like hugs. This being a sweltering, sunny Geneva day, filled with loads of walking, it’s safe to say the hug was a bit wet. So, again, it’s not like I got nothing out of the day.

To be fair, the day wasn’t entirely horrible. I did quite like the Museum of the Reformation, and in particular its depiction of Luther burning in Hell. Also fantastic was seeing two teenagers clearly on a date, passionately making out in front of a portrait of a reformer. I’d like to think it was the boy’s idea to go to this museum on the date. “I’ll take her to the Museum of the Reformation—bitches LOVE ecclesiastical reform!”

But most spectacularly eye-opening was the exhibit where you could actually smell fragrances mentioned in the Bible. As I learned, all Biblical perfumes smell surprisingly of shit mixed with harsh chemical disinfectant. It makes me wonder how bad the ancient Middle East must have smelled if THIS was considered a luxurious improvement. I mean, I lived in the Middle East for a while, and I can tell you I’d rather be next to a sweaty Sephardi man on a bus than a bottle of nard. They tell me that nard is what that famous woman in the New Testament anointed DJ JC with, though perhaps given that nard smells of asparagus-flavored piss this woman should be considered infamous. I can clearly imagine her rubbing this vile, inexplicably expensive trash on Jesus’ feet and the world’s dear savior screaming, “For the love of God, Mary (they were all called Mary back then, weren’t they), get that off my feet!”

I also quite liked the cornball attempt to bring it all to life. I was told at the beginning by some overly enthusiastic Swiss girl that there would be a room with a dining room set up and OH MY GOODNESS if I’d only press 300 on my audio guide then I could “listen in” on John Calvin’s dinner conversations with other reformers. Needing to kill time as my tour guide, in spite of this being his fifth trip to the museum, had decided that every tiny label in the museum needed full, Talmud-length exegesis, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to let 300 be the soundtrack of my sit. I suppose they had tried to make it sound as realistic as possible by adding the sound of beverages being poured, but it had the effect of making the first minute of the recording sound as though I were eavesdropping on John Calvin having a particularly stubborn morning pee in an echoey bathroom. Ah well, points for trying, Museum of the Reformation.

Before we rounded off our day with a silent, hollow walk back to my “hotel,” we visited something called the Maison Tavel, which (as far as I can tell) is a museum. To what in particular, I’m still unsure even after spending an hour in there. Armor? Pub signs? Wallpaper? Dead stuffed pigeons? Who the fuck knows…

There was this one tiny room in Maison Tavel that was especially memorable. It was this tiny sitting room, sort of in a tower. I walked in and—I know I’ve talked about farts, belches, etc. already too many times in this post and that I’ve exceeded the quota, but just bear with me—and I caught a whiff of several hundred years’ worth of accumulated farts that have soaked into the wallpaper and gone stale. I have trouble conveying to you in words the strength of this smell, and the closest I can get is saying that it was actually like something out of a fairy tale.

Just over 48 hours in Geneva, and that’s probably what I’ll remember years from now when I look back on my weekend in Geneva. Foul smells.

Oh right. And having to start off my job interview by leading the chaplain in what was probably the most appalling bit of freestyle prayer he’s ever heard. But that’s a post for another day.

.

Some things, like hair, are more important than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

If you're in my curriculum group you probably think this blog post is going to be about how I got into an argument with our guest lecturer today over the disgusting ease with which he switched between sets of terms (Israel and the Palestinian Territories, vs The Occupiers and Palestine) depending on whether he was speaking to Palestinians or Israelis.

But no. I have an even greater injustice to speak out against.

So this guest speaker enters the room. I take a quick look at him--besides the tie that's slightly too loud for England he looks pretty normal. Typical man in a suit from an organization. However, as soon as he was invited to begin his talk, things quickly went downhill. With an ounce of hysteria in his voice, the first words out of his mouth were a desperate insistence that the windows be opened. As he threw off his jacket, tore off his tie, and rolled up his sleeves, I was starting to worry that he was having some kind of an extreme male menopausal hot flash that would result in us having a naked and crazed guest lecturer standing in front of us.

I froze in panic as some classmates hurried to the windows to allow cool air in. I know it must seem as though I'm making a bigger deal out of this man's uncomfortable warmth than perhaps I should, but I know that if I were in the same situation (a guest in unfamiliar territory who feels uncomfortably warm) I would just grin and bear the heat. I don't care if I'm dressed in more layers than a Victorian woman and the classroom's heat is so intense that the friction of pencils on paper causes small brush fires to break out--I don't give a shit. If I'm a guest speaker somewhere I'm STILL not going to perform the professional equivalent of a burlesque show by removing even a blazer.

My God, I thought. My God, this man must be crazy. The tie is off. And beneath his polite requests there is a palpable sense of urgency that seems to scream, "I AM SO WARM! I AM SO WARM! WE HAVE TO OPEN THE WINDOWS IMMEDIATELY!!!!"

With the opening of windows and speedy professional nudity this man's thirst for coolness was immediately quenched. For a second I was ready to forget the fact that this man was OH MY GOD SO WARM!, but then he turned his back to the class.

I saw it, and for a split second I continued my usual daydreaming. Today's reverie involved Robin Hood asking me to give up the whole teaching thing in favor of simply being a badass. This then morphed into imagining Robin Hood, St Stephen, and Ronald McDonald having a picnic together. They were just about to--WAIT. WAIT. Hold the phone. Stop the presses. Get into your nuclear bunker. What in the name of Hank F. Effington is attached to the back of that guy's head?

From the front he looked totally normal. Okay, maybe his mustache was slightly too big and slightly too ginger for his gray beard, but otherwise he looked average. Slight receding hairline, gray hair, glasses...nothing too weird here. I found myself employing my Jedi powers to get him to turn again so I could catch sight of it. Come on...come on...

BINGO!

I took a moment to just stare at it in all of its rattail glory. I've really never seen anything like it. It looked like if he grew it out for another couple of months he could tuck it into his belt loop and use it as an alternative to suspenders. It was so long, a nearly never-ending braid, and my God was it tiny. At its widest it was about the width of my pinky, but it quickly withered away into a tiny braid that would make a fine toupee for a fetus. Such a tiny braid, how could he do it himself? Does his wife braid it every morning as she silently dies inside? Can such a man even attract a wife?

I briefly got a hold of myself and turned away from the hypnotic hairdo, but unfortunately I made eye contact with one of my classmates. And we just knew. We just knew. This man has a goddamn RATTAIL.

Well fuck, I thought to myself. I came here today to learn, but there goes any hope of me not having at least three inappropriate and uncontrollable giggles today. All of them hair-related. As it happened, I did manage to control my giggles (though I did have a couple of spontaneous fits of shaking). I did, however, find myself unable to stop myself from imagining what it would be like to pull on it. Not just a slight tug. I mean a serious yank that throws the man around the room like a rag doll tied to a ceiling fan. I wanted to grab hold of that rattail and drag the man around the room. I wanted to use that rattail to turn that man into a human hammer like Miss Trunchbull does. How much force would I need to apply to floor him simply by tugging on his hair? I wondered to myself. Could it be used like a leash? When he gives horsey rides to his children (assuming he has any I think we can safely assume they all--even the girls--have rattails), do they use it as a whip?

But enough about this man's hair. There's one more thing that must be addressed:

The Snort.

Look, I know what it's like to laugh. Sometimes you get a little carried away and you might snort a little bit. But provided you commit ritual suicide immediately afterwards, this snort is completely forgivable. This man, however, apparently thought he'd forgo the laughter that accompanies this embarrassing and unholy noise and simply have a snort in a vacuum.

What am I talking about?

Here's a normal snort laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*]
Hahahahahhaha--SNORK--HaOMGthatwassoembarrassinghahahah

Here's this guy's laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*]
SNORK!


I'm sorry, but simply making a snort noise is not an acceptable alternative to laughter. I can forgive his gross political views, his hot flashes, and even his rattail. But I feel that snort laughing without actually laughing is a character flaw that should be grounds for immediate termination. And I don't mean firing him.

Bitches love Iceland

So this one time I met this bitch who fucking LOVES Iceland. I mean, I thought I had a passion for England, but what I thought was my love for England is nothing but a slight fluttering of the heart that one might feel if England were a passing hot man on a bus, compared to this girl's infatuation with Iceland. See, when she would talk about Iceland I was tempted to ask if the two of them needed a moment alone.

Speaking of needing a moment alone with a country...


Everything we saw around us would remind her of something she saw in Iceland when she was on vacation there last week. She had a sip of beer and then talked about how she had a beer back in Iceland. I asked her if it tasted anything like the beer she was drinking now, and is that why she brought it up? And she said, "No, it was just a beer. The beer reminded me that I drank beer in Iceland." She then pointed at her sweater and revealed that it was bought in Iceland. We passed postcards in shops, and she informed me that (shockingly) they do in fact sell Iceland postcards in Iceland. We were in Paris at the moment, and she thought it important to tell me (lest I think otherwise) that, unlike these Parisian postcards, the Iceland postcards didn't have the Eiffel Tower on them. If it drizzled, the drops of rain would be compared to the size of the raindrops in Iceland. The five words she knew in Icelandic were unfavorably compared to the three words she had learned in French, and her understanding of the Icelandic governmental system (gleaned from about four days spent there) was used to give comparative analysis of the French governmental system (the understanding of which was gleaned from about two days spent in Paris).

Anyway, I met Mrs. Iceland when I was staying in a youth hostel in Paris back in December when I got so upset that I had to leave the country for a good ol' fashioned mope. She was exactly my age and, when compared with our other roommate who on our first night went on a tirade against toilet paper, she seemed relatively normal. Sure, I said. Sure I'll go touring with you tomorrow. I figured maybe this trip didn't have to be all about moping and feeling sorry for myself (though there'd still be plenty of time for that), and maybe I could even make a new friend.

Though I guess I should've taken the hint when she kept demanding that I do a British accent for her. She was Australian and for some reason was obsessed with the fact that I now live in England. "Speak in an English accent!" she'd shriek at me. "COME ON, SPEAK IN AN ENGLISH ACCENT!" The first few times I laughed it off and said that I couldn't do a good one. But then after about the tenth time she asked me I began to wonder if this girl had escaped from some sort of a treatment program for people with perverted obsessions with poorly done foreign accents. By the twentieth time I was contemplating suicide. I shrugged it off though and still agreed to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris with her, embracing the excuse to stop lying face-down on the bed and acting almost paralytic with sadness.

Spending the day with Mrs. Iceland turned out to be quite the eye-opener. I guess the major lesson I learned is that never, in ANY circumstances, tell people that you teach. I've learned that people take the line, "I'm a teacher" as an invitation to have explosive diarrhea of inane questions that would make even your 6th graders think, "What a retard." Like, it's to the point where I would now prefer to tell people I have a thriving career as a rapist, because then at least people would leave me well the fuck alone.

I guess I should have been relieved that for once this girl was expressing an interest in something other than my ability to do a fake English accent or the noble nation of Iceland, but in reality I just wanted to stuff a rag into her mouth. A rag that was attached to a Molotov cocktail. The soundtrack of Paris was replaced by this girl's constant stream of "What is that? What is this? Where are we? How do you say French fries in French? How do you say toilets in French? How do you say how do you say in French? Comment d---wait, how did it go? Comment dit-on France in French? Comment dit-on I like in French? Okay, j'aime Iceland. Is that how you say I like Iceland in French? How do you say fjords in French?"

She asked for a steady stream of vocabulary in French, and for some reason understood only by Mrs Iceland and God, she felt it necessary to specify "in French" at the end of every request. As though I'd suddenly assume she were asking me about Hebrew if she didn't clarify each and every goddamn time.

"Where are we again? Wait, where's that? What is that? How do you say Notre Dame in French? Notre Dame? That's weird."

Finally I suggested we visit the Sainte-Chapelle, as I had fond memories of the windows when I last visited a few years ago.

And then this girl came up with a winner: "Tell me the history of Sainte-Chapelle." What? Like, what about it? "Yeah, just tell me the history." Um...
I told her I didn't remember, that last time I was there about about four years ago. She then changed her question: "Oh. Then how much did the entry cost?" I reminded her that, again, it was four years ago and I didn't remember. And she just about had a stroke, so shocked was she. How could I not remember how much something cost four years ago???? THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!

Yes, because what I remember about vacations is ticket prices.

I guess the clincher though was sitting at a sidewalk cafe, the kind of place where you pay 8 euro for a hot chocolate. Trying to make conversation, and perhaps sensing that I had long since checked out of the conversation, she asked me a question about religion. "Tell me the difference between Islam and Christianity," she asked.

Hmm. I honestly told her I was happy to talk about religion, but I didn't know where to even begin with that kind of question. Is there anything specific she wanted to know? Could she narrow down her question and then maybe I could help her out?

She carefully considered my request, and then asked, "So is Abraham a prophet in Islam and also in Christianity?" I answered her question by backing up a little, explaining what a prophet is, and then answering that, yes, Abraham is a prophet in both.

And she responded by nodding sagely and saying, "Ah, so they're the same religion then?"

I got a little flustered, "Well, not exactly. They have some things in common, and they both like Abraham, but they're also quite different."

"Right," she argued, "but if they both have Abraham as a prophet then they're the same religion, yeah?"

"Um. I..."


I guess now would also be a good time to point out that Mrs Iceland was the daughter of Methodist ministers.

At this point I gave up. You have a creepy fascination with English accents, you basically want to have sex with Iceland, you ask stupid questions, and now you think that having anything in the middle part of a Venn Diagram makes both sides of the Venn Diagram the exact same thing. Learn the concept of Venn Diagrams, lady, and then we'll talk. So fuck you, Mrs Iceland. We're done. Tomorrow I'd rather take a gamble on Miss "Toilet Paper is the Devil's Work."

The Methodists Effing Love Me

So this is not to insult any Methodists I may know and love, but the Methodist service I experienced this morning was quite possibly the most somber and awful hour of my life—which was then followed by the most socially intense and terrifying 15 minutes of my life.

THE HYMNS
To start, I didn’t get the memo that only Grandma and her bridge partners attend the 10:30 a.m. service, giving me such a level of self-consciousness that I actually found myself starting to pray to instantaneously develop wrinkles. What I did find delightful/depressing though was that, as an older crowd, they didn’t immediately stand up for the hymns. For each hymn the leader would say, “Please stand for Hymn ____” and then there’d be like an hour or so where everyone would contemplate how to get away with not actually standing, and finally (about halfway through the hymn) they’d realize that they had no choice but to just stand for the damn thing. Their general sentiment was one of “Aw eff, gimme a minute…,” the same feeling of defeat that requires people to make two attempts at getting off the couch.

Then there was the issue of hymn choice. As soon as I had arrived and opened their book of hymns, I got really excited that they had “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” That’s the first thing I do in any church, and I immediately judge any church whose hymnbook doesn’t have it—I recognize that this is completely irrational and also that as a Jew I have no right to dictate what makes a good hymnal, but this doesn’t stop me from judging up a storm whenever I come into a church.

Anyway, I thought any church that has “Come Thou Fount” can’t be half bad. But then instead of the glory of “Come Thou Fount” they chose to sing “Rejoice in the Lord,” which I would describe as a cheerful funeral dirge. Hell, even “Come Thou Fount” aside, the hymn right above “Rejoice in the Lord” in the book was the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which is undoubtedly the most epic song—religious or otherwise—EVER. And to confess something embarrassing, sometimes I like to sing it to myself when I’m feeling particularly smug and self-righteous about something I’ve just done. So my question here is, WHY WOULD YOU CHOOSE THIS PILE OF SHIT WHEN THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC IS RIGHT ABOVE IT? It’s just racist is what it is.

No, instead of badass war songs about how God is trampling shit we had to sing the sort of crap we used to have to sing at elementary school concerts, accompanied by the muzak-y Nordstrom’s piano. I felt that same sense of “Fuuuuuuck, this song is so shit it almost isn’t even worth the math lesson I get to miss to perform it.”

THE PASTOR
All I know is that this lady seemed to be pissed off about something. The sermon wasn’t a sermon, it was a scolding from my mom. If my mom were Scottish. And if my mom were in any way capable of being stern and awful, for that matter. See, it wasn’t even a sermon about how we should all be better people, which would at least make her chastising tone at least a little understandable. No, it was basically Mom standing there with her arms crossed, saying in a stern, angry and disappointed voice, “So Jesus is going to return in all his glory and I want you all to sit and just think about what you’ve done.” “Once in Heaven we will all know perfect peace with God and you should be ashamed of yourself, young lady.” “Nothing comes close to the joy we will feel at the return of Jesus and I am severely disappointed in you, I really expected better from you.

Just to emphasize how incredibly ashamed of itself the congregation should be, the pastor littered her speech with pregnant pauses. Like, literally pregnant, as in they would last for nine months. They lasted so long that there were several moments where I thought maybe the meeting had devolved into a Quaker meeting, and then I’d very suddenly be startled back into reality when this crazy bitch remembered to continue with her train of thought.
Damn, that’s some good sermoning.

THE CONGREGATION
I did find the people to be delightful. I particularly liked the woman sitting next to me, who would respond with an enthusiastic “YES” whenever she agreed with something someone had said. Which, being a Methodist in a room filled with Methodists saying Methodisty things, happened quite frequently. I wish I could have seen how she responds when someone says something she disagrees with. Does she give it a “NO” or does she go for the more emphatic “FALSE”?

My God though, I think Methodists are too friendly.
So friendly were these Methodists that at the end of the service I felt like Simba in the Lion King when he’s caught up in that stampede of wildebeests as this horde of Methodists descended upon me. After tackling each other and breaking hips in their desperate rush to shake my hand, the herd of grandmas would then tell me EVERYTHING THAT IS GOING ON IN THE CHURCH EVER. I thought I had nearly escaped, but as I started to pull the exit open an old man literally blocked my path so that he could speak to me. And as he spoke to me yet another receiving line of eager Methodists formed, and I was once again welcomed and told of EVERYTHING THAT IS GOING ON IN THE CHURCH EVER.

So friendly were these Methodists that I’m pretty convinced that, should I ever return to this church, everyone will immediately throw themselves to lie prostrate on the floor as they offer up prayers of thanksgiving to God for my return. The congregation will weep tears of joy, and once they’ve blown their noses they will start planning a parade in my honor. The level of excitement for my Second Coming will match or maybe even exceed their excitement for Christ’s.

So friendly were these Methodists that I considered staying for coffee, simply because I thought my slipping out before fellowship coffee might actually cause some of them to commit suicide with Dido-like levels of flamboyance. Gosh though, never thought I’d miss the days of unfriendly and unwelcoming cliques at Hillel Shabbat services…