TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 36

Mon Oct 23 07:17:24 PDT 2006

October 22, 200000000000006

Dear You Who Read and Comprehend,

	I belong to an internet dating service 
called, "Jdate", for Jewish singles.  I've had 
conversations with some of the interested 
parties, and a few meets over coffee, but never 
anything more than that.  People just are not 
what they say they are (what they think they 
are), and there is such a difference between 
printed matter and a live flesh and blood human 
being.  The whole computer dating routine is a 
little silly, unless someone can tell me of a 
plan that isn't.

	Anyway, I found a fellow on Craig's List 
who billed himself as, "Good Guy".  This was a 
couple of years ago, when I was first recovering 
from villainman's departure and decided I had to 
branch out and meet people, get out of my 
isolation.  Good Guy was in desperate straits 
financially.  So was I.  But he managed to play 
schnorer (moocher) to me, manipulating me into 
loaning him money for something he was going to 
pay me back for immediately, or as soon as that 
check came in from the big client who owed him. 
The checks never materialized, of course, and 
after a while, what with a tank of gas here, and 
a car repair there (he had a Jaguar that financed 
his mechanic's life),  half of his rent here, and 
actually a plane ticket there, he wound up owing 
me about a thousand dollars before I told him I 
absolutely couldn't do that any more.  He said he 
understood and that should do nothing to our 
friendship.  He loved me, he said.

	Every time he came over, he'd busy 
himself on his cell phone, making calls, and 
motion to me to get him a drink.  The whole scene 
became old.  There were other factors, too: his 
hyper-neurotic involvement with a woman back east 
who emotionally abused him, his disappearance 
every time the check arrived, his never 
listening.  Then, I saw his face and Good Guy tag 
on Jdate.  I was surprised to see his claim under 
"yearly income" as, "over $100,000".  I called 
him, and we chatted.  I asked him about his 
executive search business (headhunter for big 
companies), and he said it had turned the corner 
and he was doing great.  Simply great.  So I 
asked that he pay me back the measly thousand 
dollars he owed me.  I was in dire financial 
circumstances, borrowing money from my mother 
every month just to stay above water.  He said he 
was good for it, and would send it right away.  I 
waited.  You know the rest of the story.  He 
disappeared utterly from my life, and wouldn't 
return my phone calls or e-mails.  Good Guy. Feh.

	I was just informed by Jdate of my new 
matches.  There was "Good Guy" again, smiling up 
from his photograph, claiming all those things 
that people on dating services claim.  It made me 
uneasy and a little mad.  How can you tell about 
someone from the internet?  Some people should 
come with a warning label.  Maybe we all should.

	There is more.

Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three Bags Full

	Halloween is not celebrated the same all 
over the United States.  In Maryland, when I was 
little, there were two nights of trick or 
treating.  There was, "All Saints' Night", that 
was on the 30th of October, and then the big 
daddy of them all, Halloween, on the 31st.  On 
All Saints' Night, pretty much the same ritual 
took place.  From door to door, in costumes, the 
little kidlets would ring doorbells and receive 
handfuls of candy.  Then on Halloween, we'd 
repeat the pleasure, filling our bags with more 
confections, junk, sugar and fat, chocolate and 
nuts.  It seems, in memory, that everyone was 
remarkably generous.  We'd fill a bag with candy, 
then return home, and dump it all into the big 
yellow pyrex bowl.  Then we'd go out again, like 
working stiffs bringing our cards to the time 
clock, and checking in for hard labour.  We'd 
pick up where we left off, and, with our fresh 
empty bags work our way down the block.  In those 
days, no one went with us.  Either people were 
naive and unsuspecting, or the streets actually 
were safer.  Parents opened their front doors and 
let their little goblins and fairy princesses out 
by themselves to walk the streets in search of 
chocolate.

	We knew which were the lavish givers and 
which were the skin flints.  There was always 
somebody who made hand crafted treats: popcorn 
caramel balls, candied apples, rice crispy 
squares.  And these houses would be mobbed. 
Things like caramel popcorn balls were difficult 
to toss in the bag with the other riff raff, 
because everything would stick to it.  My sister 
and I went together.  One year, she went as the 
headless horseman.  My mother had rigged up a 
coat hanger on her head that held the jacket 
above her, so that the visage of no head had 
dramatic impact.  I went as a butterfly.  We 
always had unusual costumes.  My mother was 
brilliant at fabricating costumes from all our 
weird ideas.  I was a dinosaur.  I was a penguin. 
I was a kangaroo.  I was whatever my whim 
instructed.  Did I ever think about the trials 
and tribulations of my mother trying to fulfill 
those whims?  No.  It was understood.  She was 
there to make my dreams come true.

	When the headless horseman and the 
butterfly came to a house down the street from 
ours that had run out of candy, the man and lady 
of the house apologized profusely.  "We're so 
sorry.  We made caramel apples.  But we gave away 
the last one half an hour ago."  My sister waited 
until they were swamped with other trick or 
treaters and then she had me follow her into 
their living room where she found the 
Encyclopedia Brittanica arranged neatly on the 
shelves, and then she pulled all the books off 
the bookcase and into a haphazard pile of rubble 
on the floor.  Then she sneaked away into the 
dark wicked night.  Halloween gave License to all 
sorts of anti-social behaviour.  I remember 
standing there gaping at her stunt, thinking how 
mean and dangerous she was.

	When we'd filled our second bags with 
loot, we'd come home, kick off our costumes and 
sit at the big yellow pyrex bowl and proceed to 
eat every last piece of candy as if it were a 
mission.  We'd clean that goddamn bowl if it made 
us sick to our stomachs and souls.  The idea was 
to finish it.  It was a job, and a worker's gotta 
do what a worker's gotta do.

	When we returned to California, we 
couldn't believe our misfortune that there was no 
All Saints' Night, and there was only one measly 
night of Halloween.  We insisted that we keep 
with Maryland, east coast, tradition, regardless 
of west coast habit.  And we set out, with our 
parents' knowing blessings, on the 30th of 
October, to introduce this fine custom to the 
ignorant Berkeley residents.  And you know, they 
looked at us with disbelief when we interrupted 
their dinners the night before Halloween.  They 
were non-plussed.  They were confused.  They were 
not about to reward us with candy for our 
strange, greedy tradition.  We trudged back home, 
weatherworn and rejected, disappointed in the 
west coast for its stinginess.  We adapted. 
There's just so much sugar and fat that any child 
can consume.  We did our best to make sure that 
the one sole lonely night of Halloween reaped 
huge benefit.  And we heaped our bagfuls of booty 
into that same yellow pyrex bowl, and went at it 
like responsible adults.

-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net