Day 171: Amazing Grace

Apparently, everyone in Israel is aluf (a champion). If you’re a 6-year-old boy playing basketball and you miss four shots in a row but make the fifth, you’re aluf. If you’re a 43-year-old woman and you even just show up for your exercise class, you’re alufa.

And, apparently, everything in Israel is amazing. I confirm an 11am meeting with a student and she says, “Amazing.” I text my tennis partner I have some decent used balls we can hit with and he responds, “Amazing.”

To be fair, amazing is a tricky word. It can mean awesome, shocking, or ridiculous. I’ll leave it to you, Astute Reader of Saul’s Famous, to figure out what it means for the remainder of this post.

It’s amazing Trump was ever elected. I guess knowing what we know now, it’s not that amazing: 75 million Americans really are that dumb. Still, it’s amazing he got away with everything he did these past four years. I suppose two impeachments isn’t really “got away with everything,” but it’s still amazing that no one assassinated him. Yet.

It’s amazing that we finally have a new president, someone who, despite his disappearing lips, strange balding pattern, and overall skeletal appearance, seems to have good intentions. On January 20th, Inauguration Day, Broosevelt once again woke us up too early. As the Boss was trying to kick him out of our bed, he looked up at me, smiled, and said, “Happy Biden president day.”

It’s amazing that BLM protesters get tear-gassed and that those fucking insurrectionists get a boost to climb the Capitol walls. Prejudices exist in Israel too: Orthodox Jews in Israel get fined half as often for breaking COVID protocols; Arab-Israelis get fined twice as often.

Speaking of getting fined, the 500₪ ($150) fine we got the other day was amazing. Israel is currently in its third hard lockdown. We have to stay within a kilometer from home, but we can walk, bike, and recreate outdoors. Last weekend, my brood and I met another family at the park to play baseball. 20 meters from us, the basketball courts were filled with dudes breathing and sweating on each other. The cops honked at them to scatter. Groups of cops walked by our game more than once and didn’t say a word. Then later in the afternoon, Assface Cop 1 and Assface Cop 2 decided to give us a ticket even though we were socially distanced and following the current lockdown rules. We will not be paying aforementioned fine.

Even though this lockdown has already lasted two weeks and will continue for at least one more, the rate of vaccination in Israel is amazing. High school students are now being vaccinated and after the Boss got her first shot yesterday, a barista offered her a free latte. 

The Boss is amazing. She cleansed our filthy children of lice and explained prostitution to OG, but her most amazing moment was when she may or may not have been overheard telling one of our rude children to “shut up.”

It was amazing when I got home from work the other day and, instead of seeing the kids hard at work reading, writing, and scrubbing the floors, they had prepared a January 18th Halloween party complete with left-over black and orange decorations, a Halloween B-I-N-G-O and scavenger hunt, and pin-the-tail on the monster. I don’t know what the hell happens around here during the day, but it ain’t learning.

Before he forgets, Saul would like to officially recognize the amazing Panini who, despite being in the throes of puberty and having had her life upended by a foreign country, a new language, and her first zit, is generally doing her best to work hard and create meaningful friendships through sleep-overs, picnics, and baking brookies. He would also like to state that not all problems are big problems, and that not all struggles are significant, and that kids in inner-city Chicago surrounded by violence, and especially child soldiers in Uganda, have it way worse than Panini has it, and that not all of her problems and issues deserve validation god damnit.

It’s amazing when OG dances to no music and that she eats most meals by herself because she can’t make it to the table when everyone else is eating. 

It’s amazing that Broosevelt knows the ages of all the dads of the kids in his class. (He says I’m the second oldest.) It’s also amazing that sometimes during soccer, he lets the other kids make him play goalie the whole time. 

It’s amazing Boni joined basketball with one other girl and ten boys, and that she loves Star Wars. She may be turning into someone I actually like.

It’s amazing how patient I am. The other day, I made a delicious dinner for the family. As we were enjoying the meal, the Boss said to me, “This bread is stale, like our marriage.”

It’s amazing how much I’ve taught my children. Last week, I heard the Boss say to one of our amazing kids, “Who has been picking their nose and wiping boogers on the bed?!?”

Perhaps you remember that in November and December, we went on a few tiyulim (trips). Well, yesterday we went on another amazing tiyul to the small, abandoned airport in between our apartment and the beach. There is barbed-wire fencing around the whole facility, but there are plenty of holes to crawl through. The pièce de résistance is the control tower, which has been artistically transformed into a heroin den: busted-out windows, shards of glass lining the floor, and graffiti-filled walls. My kids climbed the narrow staircase, nimbly avoiding tetanus hazards, and jumped around gleefully on the mattress on the top floor. Upon returning downstairs, they chased each other around with sheets of metal, rubber tubes, and electric wires. It was truly one of the most exciting, dangerous, and amazing experiences we’ve had here.

The best part, however, was when Broosevelt and I shared the ultimate male bonding experience: spelling our names in the sand with urine.

I was told they’ll be building 16,000 apartments on that prime real estate over the coming years. When a beach-front property offers a crack house as its centerpiece, it’s clearly reached its nadir, so now the only direction to go is up.

On that uplifting note, I hate religion and country music, but I did get emotional listening to Garth Brooks sing Amazing Grace at the inauguration the other day. After a deeply traumatic four years, listening to Biden’s speech, hearing Gorman’s poem, and seeing our nation’s leaders masked up and ready for action was amazing.

Si se puede.

Day 162: The Dentist

I know “everyone’s shit is all emotional right now” (President Camacho, Idiocracy), what with 4,000 COVID deaths a day in the U.S. and the storming of the Capitol by Trump’s henchmen. Keep calm: Biden's inauguration is only a few days away and there definitely won’t be any violence. The progressive, anti-Trump, Black Lives Matter-supporting police have everything under control.

Israel, a country of 10 million, is nearing 10,000 daily COVID cases, and we are currently in the second week of a hard lockdown with schools shuttered and travel banned. In a couple of months, there will be another national election, the fourth in two years. But fear not: Israel has vaccinated 2 million people (yes, 1/5th of its population) and I got my first shot today. My arm is killing me, they kicked me out of the building even though I said I was experiencing an allergic reaction, and I had to pay 10 shekel for parking, but otherwise I think it was worth it.

Amidst all the chaos, desperation, and lack of hope for any type of decent future, I have found meaning in my life: I’m in love.

Yes, I like my children most of the time and, sure, I love my wife, but until my visit to the dentist earlier this week, I never knew what it meant to be in love.

In Israel’s world of socialized medicine, only one cleaning a year is paid for, so I knew it would be a special visit. I left my house around 5:40pm for a 6:00pm appointment. It’s possible I was wearing pajama pants from a former student’s Bar Mitzvah; they’re plaid and they have big holes in the crotch. 

It was a perfect evening: nearly 70 degrees, a slight breeze, and a few clouds in the sky. I walked north to the end of our two-block neighborhood and strolled up a stone staircase towards a busy intersection. I pulled my mask over my nose, crossed the street, and made my way towards the Ramat Aviv mall, which is next to the office building in which my soon-to-be second wife works.

At the entrance, there was a Filipina nurse helping an extremely old Israeli man; I went in front of them because I don’t have a walker. The security guard was a brown-skinned gentleman, likely an immigrant from Ethiopia. I scanned my temperature, took the elevator to the 13th floor, and entered the dentist’s office. After some awkward English-Hebrew exchanges with the three ladies at the front desk, I was invited back to Room 1, the Room of Destiny.

There she was: 55-ish years old, dyed blonde hair, slightly overweight, white Reebok walking shoes, a mask, a face-guard, gloves, and a smock. Perfection.

I laid down in the chair and looked up at the face-down TV hanging from the ceiling. I couldn’t understand most of what I was watching and felt guilty for not giving my soulmate my undivided attention, so I refocused.

As she was about to begin, it occurred to me to ask if I should take off my glasses, but I hesitated because I couldn’t remember if the word for glasses was mishkafayim (glasses) or michnasayim (pants). I didn’t want to make that mistake and make her feel uncomfortable; I wanted to let things unfold naturally.

So I motioned to my glasses and said, “Im o bli zeh?” (With or without these?). She shrugged, indicating it didn’t matter one way or the other. 30 seconds later, she ripped them off my face with one hand and tossed them on the table. It was somewhere between romantic and aggressive. Or both.

In Hebrew, she told me to open my mouth, but I momentarily forgot what liftoach meant. She said it again. I opened. Over the next ten minutes, she commanded me numerous times to liftoach (open) or lizgor (close). Sometimes I got confused, and she yelled at me, “Takshiv!” (Listen!). It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

My dentist in America uses a manual scraper to clean my teeth; this hygienist used a rapidly vibrating, electric scraper which violently shoots water. She cleaned my teeth with reckless abandon, paying no attention to my receding gums, exposed nerves, and painful grimaces. 

I noticed she spoke Hebrew with a Russian accent. Her adverse experiences under the Soviet regime had clearly hardened her. She was a strong woman who demanded strength from others. She patted me on the chest a couple of times as if to say, “Suck it up, you little American bitch.”

The water from the tool she used squirted all over my face. She never offered me a towel. She unapologetically yanked my neck from one side to the other. She demanded I pay extra for a fluoride treatment. She barely said goodbye.

I don’t know her name. I don’t know where she lives. I don’t even know if she’s vaccinated. But I know that very soon I will mysteriously need a root canal so I can return to her place of work and once again experience something between Little Shop of Horrors and grand masochism.

We’re never moving back.

Day 150: No Respect

Rodney Dangerfield and I have many similarities: We’re both Jewish, we’re both hilarious, we both did stand-up comedy in the “Borscht Belt” resorts of the Catskill Mountains, and we both get no respect.

Broosevelt, Noni, and I did a Hebrew-reading competition. I read more quickly, fluidly, and accurately than both of them, but the Boss declared Broosevelt the winner because god forbid her children lose at something.

At age 44, I’m putting a tennis beat-down on some punk-ass millennial more than ten years younger than me, and this old dude walks over and says to the millennial, “You played in college? Your tennis is beautiful.” 

Where are my props? When will my greatness be appreciated?

The state of Israel doesn’t respect that I, as a teacher of tightly quarantined and regularly tested wealthy international students at a boarding school, am on the goddamn front lines every day. First the government said I was gonna get vaccinated and then they said I had to wait. And then they said they were running out of vaccine and that the entire country is gonna have to press pause. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, the CEO of Pfizer better damn well know that my ancestors didn’t suffer torture and death so I could wait in line with people in third-world countries.

Not that I’ll even get the vaccine when it’s available; my moral and medical philosophies prohibit me from doing so. Yet my own colleagues don’t respect my beliefs. Some presumptuous teacher sent a WhatsApp to all the teachers about abortion finally being legalized in Argentina and the principal sent an email to all the teachers asking for information so we could get the vaccine. Do these cancel culture fools not appreciate that life starts at conception and that vaccines lead to some really, really bad allergic reactions?

I visited one of my constitutionally weaker students in the hospital. All I got was an email saying I’m a “good person.”

Panini baked nearly 60 cookies for her friends in bidud (quarantine) but said she didn’t make any extra for me. 

(Note: There were 20 left over cuz Panini sucks at math.)

We sat down for dinner on New Year’s Eve and, after 10 minutes, the Boss and Panini left to schmooze with the neighborhood ladies and deliver Panini’s burned cookies to her friends. 10 minutes after that, Broosevelt was in the corner working on his Legos, Boni was who the hell knows where, and it was just me and OG at the table. I thought we might have a couple of minutes of quality-time together, but OG picked up a handful of green beans, looked directly at me, and, with a big smile on her face, said, “This is the worst year of my life.”

A couple hours later, Panini was on a Zoom with her friends and I committed the apparently unforgivable atrocity of saying hi to her friends. Tears flowed, milk spilled, a wife screamed at her husband, and the disrespect and disdain for Saul had reached its climax.

2021 is when this shit ends. 2021, the Year of Saul, is when COVID ends, Trump kills himself, and Saul finally gains some goddamn dignity and respect.