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.