My cellphone (Z"L) or How I almost died from Hebrew

Last night, I almost died from Hebrew.  Learning it, that is.  

There have been moments over the past couple months, as I struggled to learn a whole new alphabet and read it backwards, that I believed I might die of it.  But never did I think my tendency towards ancient Greek hyperbole would almost become an Upper West Side modern Jewish reality.  

As I mentioned before, dying an ironic death is among my worst fears and surely this would qualify.  And to make it doubly ironic, I have many times mused out loud, publicly, brazenly, smugly and without knocking on wood, that I could not conceive how someone could fall onto subway tracks (barring drunkenness).  "Ridiculous!"  said I.

Well, I very nearly became a NY Post Police Blotter snippet for tempting the fates so.

The setting: A crowded subway platform  on west 103rd street.

The players: Me, Various Disinterested Commuters and One Good Samaritan

The action: Waiting for the 1 train.

Me, a flurry of multitasking; busily texting, reading a book called, "Hebrew Talk: 101 Hebrew Roots and the Stories They Tell" and pulling two pieces of my favorite sugar-free gum Cool Colada out of my bag.  I could hear the train coming down the pike.  I could feel that hot subterranean breeze of an impending train.  I was savoring that synthetic Miami-in-your-Mouth taste that is Cool Colada.  I was learning about the power of the Hebrew word, elef.  

Then it gets a little hazy.  I know I dropped my phone.  I know I could now see the fuzzy halo of a headlight in the tunnel.  I remember watching the phone bounce across the yellow do-not-cross-idiot line painted on the tiled floor.  

Then like an urban lunatic possessed, one who cannot conceive of getting a new phone, let alone lose all those phone numbers, I inched towards the yellow line.  My bag, which was heavy with a day's worth of city living, shifted forward as I bent down and I lost my balance.  Not like, "Oopsy- should've worn more sensible shoes", but like, " Oh fuck.  I'm the girl who dies under the IRT."

But then a man, an angel really, grabbed me firmly around the waist from behind as I teetered.  If it had been any other circumstance, I would classify his grasp as borderline erotic.  But he was saving me.  Being saved is kind of erotic, actually. 

Anyway, now slightly shaken but alive, I thanked the man and the subway doors slid open.  He and the Various Disinterested Commuters boarded the train unfazed.  There was a kind of New York crisis averted and now get on with your life feeling, almost like this big dramatic thing hadn't happened.

And there I was, alone on the platform, and had a very eerie feeling.  As strange as it may seem, I started to panic that I had actually died.  "Omigod," I thought, "I've died and this is what happens.  The afterlife is going to be roaming the 7th avenue subway platform for eternity."  

It's not logical, I know, but see how you feel after almost dying by subway car.  My only solution was to run up the stairs to street level and have my existence verified by someone.  Anyone.

And there stood my perpetual port in the storm, the frozen dessert Oasis, Tasti D Lite.  I went in, my existence was acknowledged, praise Allah and I ordered.  I was alive and had 12 ounces of Peanut Butter Tasti to prove it.

My Hebrew teacher, the Rav Tastic Dvora, thinks I shouldn't take it as Greek omen to stop learning the Alef Beis, as I interpreted it, but perhaps I should now study only sitting down. 

 

Love is a Ponzi Scheme

Due to the technical ineptitude of PleaseJudgeMe, "Love is A Battlefield," does not automatically play while you read this post.   The video can be found below.

Ever since it was uncovered Bernie Madoff made off with however many krabillions of dollars it was, I admit I've been a little Ponzi obsessed. In fact, it has completely replaced my most recent overused non-word, "bloggable".

Every article of speech has been Ponzified. For example:

"Omigod, he so Ponzied you."
"I don't know, it just felt kind of Ponzi-ish."
"What a Ponzi!"

It gets worse. Two mornings ago, I woke with the First Lesbian of Rock, Pat Benetar, and the classic 80's anthem, "Love is a Battlefield," in my head.  The problem is, as the song played on repeat in my head, Battlefield was replaced by, you guessed it, Ponzi Scheme.

It was funny for the first five minutes. Then it became annoying. I listened to equally, if not more addictive songs, that couldn't be Ponzified, with the hope of skipping my internal record. I turned to Sir Elton, knowing that ,"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" is like the symphonic version of SARS. No luck. Desperate, I actually bought the 4 Non Blondes song, you know the one, figuring however toxic, would keep me humming, "What's Going On" until spring. Again, "Love is a Ponzi Scheme" kept on returning.

But then last night around 4am, I untangled myself from my beau's arms to write, still Ponzi-ing my Ponzi off, and realized maybe there's a reason I can't stop.

Maybe love is a Ponzi Scheme. Big Bernie M. not only succeeded in robbing people blind, but maybe more astonishingly, he was able to trick presumably smart and savvy folks into trusting him. Trust is how he did it.

So, in the name of optimism on Valentine's Day, perhaps it's better to say: love has the potential to be the ultimate Ponzi scheme, but that's a lot harder to set to a tune.

A Room of My Own

It has been nearly five years since I've had my own four walls and a door to close.  Longer still, if you count the year prior spent bouncing in and out of Camp Cupcake, hiding my mandatory butter pats and outsmarting beefy night nurses, whom I lovingly referred to as the Gestapo.

But now a half of a decade later, back to fighting weight and all the wiser, nestled in my cozy little room and listening to the rattling radiator, I sit half typing, half staring out my lovely big window. Even the grimy alley and small, sad urban garden below fills me with optimism.

I am less lonely in my solitude here than I ever was camping out on my Auntie Maim's utopian rent control floor.  Or certainly confined to bunk-rest at the Camp Whack-a-jobba.

I remain slightly hesitant to discuss my battle with an eating disorder and don't expect anyone to understand, since I hardly did myself.  I am still unpeeling that onion, as it were.  I can only report what it felt like; a perpetual 3rd person existential nightmare, a martial Murphy's law, where I was as unrecognizable mentally as I was physically to myself.  But I digress anorexically,

My virtual pen continues to creep back to that time, as I sort through the rubble of my 20's, but for now I am focused forward- on both my lovely, grated window and the future.  I am soothed by the hissing heat and blessed for another day and chance to be miserable.