The Jewolic by Ritch Gaiti Read Free Book Online Page A

remove your pinky now.”
    “Yes.”
    We hugged. It was a victorious breakthrough hug.
     
    Gram was old; she died. But she was always old; why did she have to die now? Why couldn’t she die when I didn’t care as much? I miss her. I will miss her every day.  I really don’t think that God designed solitaire to be played alone. For a long moment I regretted not being Bar Mitzvahed; she would have been proud. But I can’t undo what I haven’t done; the moment passed. Every time I smell an iron burning my underwear, I will think of Gram.
    I snapped Gram’s purse shut for the last time and spent the next d ay watching As the World Turns.
     

11
     
    All of the above
     
    I was tempted to question God re Gram’s departure but I figured that was too easy an out. I mean if she had some disease like gout or consumption, I could understand it. If it was God’s will, then why did He will it?  Considering that I still have 55/100% leeway, I figured that questioning God re this matter could sway me either way.
    If God were so powerful, then I definitely would have been Bar Mitzvahed. Unless, for some godly reason, He didn’t want me to be Bar Mitzvahed, which was a distinct possibility. Maybe God wanted me to be one of those kids playing stickball while those in Hebrew school, enduring their second schoolday of the day, watched through the window.
    I mean , there is supposed to be only one God so why should He care which team I was on?  Maybe my religious oscillation perturbed him and He thought that I should have made a decision long ago. Maybe he wanted to me to become a Catholic or a Cath-lite just to evenly spread the athletic mediocrity so the softball game at the annual Jew/Cath Picnic wouldn’t be so one-sided.
    Which brin gs up a point. If there was truly one God, servicing all religions, then was He not straddling religions as well? Perhaps oscillating between them as I did.  Much like Superman and Clark Kent, He has never been seen in Church and Temple at the same time, cleverly reserving Saturdays for the Jews and Sundays for Catholics, et al.
    Perhaps He thought that my destiny should be setting an example of one who went astray. I would be the poster boy for un- Bar Mitzvahed quasi-Jew boys — a living example of one who had gone astray. I pictured a black and white photo of me sitting in my empty room, scraped band-aided knee, arm in a cast from swinging and missing a high curve, my TV permanently fixed in horizontal hold, no comic books, no friends, not even God to say hi to. Ominous shadows of vertical bars cast across my sullen face. The caption below read:
    Don’t let this happen to you .
    Be Bar Mitzvahed .
    Your grandmother wouldn’t mind .
     
    Of course, I would be serving a purpose, sacrificing myself to enable many other young Jewish boys to become men, pad their savings account and acquire IPhones. If that’s what He wanted, I was ok with that. Even if I were a pawn in God’s plan, I felt useful.
    If God were so great Gram wouldn’t have died because she was old.
    “ What’s the point of getting old if you have nothing to look forward to?” I queried Hochman who sat on the floor, head on his knees. Perhaps he was beginning to become a tad weary of my single-minded discussions.
    He nodded respectfully. Or he may have been falling asleep.
    “If I were God,” I continued, as Hochman could be a better audience asleep than awake. “I would redesign life so that when you get old everything reverses and you become younger every day until you are born. Everything would be full cycle and you could have elderly wisdom on your return trip and your youth would be far less reckless.”
    He nodded again, this time accompanied by a snore.
    “Of course,” I conjectured, “you would have to go back to school and get left back each year to keep up with your age group. Clearly an obstacle. I could never get left back with my solid C+.”
    This plan needed some more work. I am beginning to see why God