Shabbat

It’s Thursday evening in a densely Jewish neighborhood. You get out of work and then the train suddenly hits you like a ton of bricks (on a train): You’ve got 10 people coming over this Shabbat and the only thing you have left in the fridge is the gefilte fish from Shabbat 2 months ago neither you nor your wife actually dares remove from the back corner for fear that it might have evolved into an intelligent being already and if you touch it, you’d have to adopt it, which would increase your guest list to 11 and you don’t have enough room at the table.

So you’re going to have to go shopping. The wife is at home with the kids and she calls you in a frenzy while you’re trying to differentiate between what she’s telling you to buy for Shabbat and when she’s yelling because Moshe just stuck a pencil in Shlomo’s nose since he wouldn’t share a toy, and 2 year old Rachel is doing some forbidden exploring in the near empty fridge.

Her: I need flour, half whole half white, two 5lb bags for a PENCIL? A PENCIL? Get that out of there!

You: What? Who need flour and a pencil…

Her: Yeah and a chicken, whole. They charge more to quarter it but also get some GEFILTE FISH? RACHEL STAY AWAY FROM THAT! IT’S EVOLVED!”

You: I thought we had gefilte fish already.

So from what you make out by the end, which isn’t much, you need to buy everything in the supermarket, sometimes twice. When you come home 3 hours later, the house is a mess, Shlomo’s nose is bleeding, and your wife needs to start the Shabbat cooking. She can’t do it without your help, but unfortunately, no matter how many times she’s told you how to do a six braid Shabbat challah, you never figured it out and refused to try again ever since that time when you valiantly attempted and it ended up baking in the shape of a Yiddish racial slur that you didn’t even know but your Shabbat guests that week, holocaust survivors, were insulted by.

So you just pretend to braid the thing but what you really do is just mush it up into a weird mass and throw it in the oven. Hopefully this time it won’t be a slur. Whenever your wife asks you to participate in any of the rest of the Shabbat food preparations you plead insanity, or otherwise end up breaking one of the Pyrexes because you put it on the bottom of the oven and they’re not supposed to be able to handle direct heat so after something breaks you’re usually free to go. You warn her that if she doesn’t dismiss you now, something in the kitchen will get destroyed, but she never learns her lesson.

When she does dismiss you to clean the bathroom, you’re stopped by Shlomo’s nosebleed and baby Rachel hands you the gefilte fish which says hi to you. You call the Department of Children and Families to get it a foster home. After all, you have too many guests this Shabbat as it is.