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The dry definition of a game is “a contest with rules to determine a winner”. I have developed a strange feeling that my dog, a small Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is playing a continuous game with me. Indeed, sometimes she wins but most of the time I lose. The rules are simple. We go out for a walk. My objective in this newly discovered game is to have the dog do her thing (pee and poop) as fast as possible, so we can get back home quickly and return to our vegetative state. She in her basket admiring my wife, me in front of the TV supposedly admiring the occasional female actress, but in all honesty dosing off. Her objective of the game is the opposite. She wants to sniff as many half wet street corner and as many half sun-dried dog crap, walk for as long as her feet carry her (which is unfair, she is four legged), and come home as late as possible.
But here’s the twist. We both know that at a certain point, usually five or ten minutes after we leave the house, I will turn around and go home. We both know that leaving smelly surprises around the house are not an acceptable gift for our family. The last piece of information, by the way, works both ways. She knows that I would find it difficult to come home and report to the boss (my wife that is) that the dog came back leaving absolutely nothing in the street. She concludes therefore, that I will keep going until she does something. And she’s not completely wrong, unless of course some show is about to start in a few minutes (she has no access to this confidential information).
So there we are, out in the cold street. I want to go back home, she wants to stay out. We look at each other and the game starts. She walks around, and in front of my hopeful eyes gets to position. She smells the hope and decides to go sniff something new. Disappointment. A few more steps, and she starts to go around as if to find the exact hole in the ground which will serve as tonight’s toilet. She sits in the strange way dogs sit when they’re about to introduce a new smelly surprise to the world, she even looks at me with reassurance as if to say: “don’t worry, you’ll get to watch your stupid show in a minute”. But then that bastard neighbor’s dog shows up and they’re at each other’s behind sniffing as if Chanel number 5 is a thing of the past. The last phenomenon probably explains why our dog Linda smells the same on both ends. Disappointment.
That’s the point that I really give up, go home, and take the risk that what happened the other night would happen again. What happened was that I woke up at 4:00 AM thinking that in my absence, my wife had accepted a homeless horse with some serious bowel issues as a house guest. Instead, as it turned out, our dog, who had won the game that night, chose to leave a hefty pile of warm crap in the entrance to my youngest son’s room. And there I was, 4:00 AM, in front of a busy work day, collecting warm and stinking pieces of fresh dung, cleaning and washing the floor, opening the windows to the cold night air. What really struck me that night was that my expectation was for a 12 lbs dog to leave behind a few ounces of poop. Instead, I saw a pile that resembles only large zoo animals production, or alternatively, large farm animals. How the hell could this outstanding amount come out of such little dog. Truthfully, I started thinking about accomplices, but then dismissed it as a crazy thought of a tired person at 4:00 AM.
We’re negotiating a truce. I do hope that we can compromise. Forget the TV and the dosing off. Walk me all you want, just leave my house crap free.
The supermarket is another game I play with my wife. She prepares a list of groceries for me, and I go get it every Friday morning after I drop the kids off at school. I know the supermarket’s pretty well. I know where almost everything is. When I get in, I park the cart right inside the store, and I get the list out. I study the list, trying to memorize it. My objective is to make a single pass of the store, getting everything the first time. Never returning to the same aisle. Dorit, who’s playing the game remotely, has a completely opposite objective. Her objective is to to have me walk around the huge store, grabbing one product at the time, moving on to the other side of the store as the cart gets heavier and heavier and its front left wheel gets nastier and nastier with each turn. The best is at the meats section. One must take a number and wait the long line. Once you use your turn to get whatever kind of meat you need, the turn is over forever, and realizing that somewhere down the list another kind was somewhere else on the list (why????), I must take another number and wait the line again.
I end up at the check out line behind the only old lady in the Middle East who still uses checks for grocery shopping. Did I mention already that the definition of game is to determine a winner? In my dog and supermarket game theory, the objective is to determine a loser. Me.
As I was driving the car to my usual Friday morning supermarket visit, I was listening to the weekly culture program on the Israeli public radio station. It was raining cats and dogs, the puddles were large and murky. I usually don’t pay much attention to these programs, and resort to my MP3 collection. But this time, the anchor was talking about a very special poet. Natan Yonatan. And as the song was playing, I was remembering the privilege of having met this very special and kind man. It was back in 1999. My family and I were in Tucson, Arizona, and Natan Yonatan was invited by the UJA (United Jewish Appeal) to participate in an evening in his honor and read some of his poems.
Being really good friends with the UJA representatives in Tucson, we met with Natan Yonatan before the event, during the event, but what was most exciting, we joined him for dinner. He was an older man, certainly over seventy at the time. He was an accomplished poet. Some say too accomplished, in that many of his poems were composed and performed by leading singers and bands. He was a very down to earth person. He spoke about his family with longing, about his work with passion. He was a great man, who somehow managed to play his greatness down in the presence of ordinary people like us. When we asked him to autograph his poem book for us, he blushed. The book is one of our prized possessions. As a man of words myself, I can say that if I compare his work to mine using terms from the transportation world, then if I could drive a tricycle, what Natan Yonatan was able to fly a spaceships… And even that, I guess, would be complimenting myself…
The song playing on the radio today is named “Like a Ballad”. Ballads are poems that end tragically. This one, though suggests that it is “like” a ballad, as the end is in fact, happy. The Hebrew words far exceed the English ones in the way the strike raw nerves. Here are both, the original (Hebrew) and the translation (English).
אם זר קוצים כואב
זה מה שאת אוהבת
אלך אל המדבר
ושם אלמד לכאוב
ואם שירים אהבת
רק שכתובים באבן
בין הכפים אגור
ובסלעים אכתוב.
ואז כשנתכסה
עם החולות בחושך
וספר הדברים
בחושך יתכסה
תגידי לי מילים
יפות מבכי ואושר
הוא כנראה אהב אותי,
האיש הזה.
If a painful bouquet of thorns
is what you love
I will go to the desert
and there i will learn to suffer
and if you love the songs
only written in the stone
I will live in the cliffs
and shall write in the rocks
and then we shall cover
with the sands in the darkness
and the book of Deuteronomy
in the darkness will cover
you will tell me words
more beautiful than sadness and happiness
he probably loved me
that man
As for me, I would change the very last verse of the poem to say “he most certainly loved me, that man”…
In 1979, more than thirty years ago, I visited the United States of America for the first time. At seventeen, it was the first time ever out of my small Middle Eastern country.
In Israel, in 1979, the term “Customer Service” was not even phrased. I remember clearly that if bought something and it broke, you could throw it away, it would never be replaced. If you needed a public official to help you with something, you should have gotten ready to be yelled at, given the run around, or simply ignored. Going to the Department of Motor Vehicle was a nightmare. You would wait in line for an entire day only to realize that you don’t have some ridiculous document that nobody needs and nobody looked at. The national airline, El Al, employed arrogant pilots and beautiful but fresh flight attendants. It was not uncommon that coffee accidentally spilled on travellers who “didn’t behave”.
In the US, however, the difference was unbelievable. “The customer is always right” was phrased, and followed. Flight attendants were smiling, pleasant, willing and wanting to help. Return policies were in place, and even government officials were actually polite. I thought it was heaven. So much so, that when I finished my military service at twenty two, I chose to go to school in the US. I stayed for ten years and came back to Israel.
To my amazement, Israel had changed completely. It appeared that many people who travelled to Europe and the US came back home and demanded service. Economic boom brought in the competition. Companies were now competing on market share. Service was part of a product. El Al pilots had learned some humility, and indeed the flight attendants were not as pretty, but sure as hell they became more polite and service oriented. A real revolution.
There was another issue. The US was making and enforcing laws for “Truth in Advertising”. Israel followed. It was decided that a customer must know, ahead of time, what he was paying for. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
A couple of years ago I was travelling with a well know American airline (not AA), and with my own eyes I have seen a flight attendant getting so mad at a passenger that pissed her off. Screaming, yelling, calling names. I thought it was an isolated case. I am travelling in the US now, and I can clearly say: the level of customer service in the US these days is far worse than customer service in Israel in the seventies. But what really got me is that truth in advertising was completely forgotten.
Let me explain. I was staying at a business hotel, reasonably expensive, at the heart of San Jose California. The rate per night was roughly $100.00. As it turns out, the $20.00 for parking the rental car, the $15.00 breakfast, the $20.00 Internet service, were not mentioned in the order. The flight from San Jose to Tucson was outstandingly bad, and the Phoenix-Tucson leg was cancelled. Not at once, but twenty minutes at a time. But what really got me was the $25.00 they charged me for checking in a bag. A bag! So security tells me not to take toiletries because some nut boarded an airplane with flammables. And the airline tells me to pay $25.00 for checking the toiletries in? Is that outrageous or what?
And then someone explained it to me. Priceline. Competition is about price. If the hotel would add the parking, internet, food to the rate per night, it would come behind in the Priceline searches. If the flight ticket included the bags, and the crappy sandwich (at best), the airline would go chapter 11. I wouldn’t be completely surprised if ultimately, the price of hotel rooms would go down to nothing. When you would check in they would ask if you need a bed, a shower, some towels, “can we offer you a large screen TV for $23.95 a night?”, and “if you choose to flush the toilet, that would be $0.99 per flush”. The airline would simply ask you if you need to actually take off, and charge you for that…
We are all in computers. We have given them the technology and by proxy the power to make our travelling life unbearable. Where will this end?
Thirteen years ago, to the day, a white Mazda pulled over next to a bus stop in the heart of Givatayim, a town across the river from Tel Aviv. A young man of thirty five stepped out of the car, greeted the young lady who was standing there, and opened the car door for her. When she was seated, he shut the door and walked around to the driver seat. They agreed to go to a cafe, in north Tel Aviv for their first date. He ordered a poppy seed cake with a ball of vanilla ice cream, and she ordered a salad. Two hours later, the man explained that there was a family gathering he had to attend. He drove the woman home, and promised to call.
He didn’t. There was some unfinished business he had to take care of before the call could be made. But when it was made, three weeks later, both felt that this was what they were waiting for very long time.
The man was recovering from a failed marriage. He had two small girls, one was barely six years old, the other not even one. He spent many years in a foreign country, from which he returned with excellent education and great working experience, but a clean bank account. He was broke, living with his parents, starting a new job, trying to rebuild his life. The woman saw through that. In fact she saw in him what he wasn’t able to see at all. She saw a young, determined, brilliant guy with a bright future. She wanted to be part of that future. They moved in together shortly after they met, and got married not too long after his divorce was finalized.
The man is me. The woman is my wife Dorit. Thirteen years, three continents, two children and thirty five kilos later ( on my side), we are still together, very much so, and I am still wondering what have I done to deserve her.
Thirteen years, Dorit. I know I thank my lucky stars for sending you my way.
Guy came home with cookies he baked in kindergarten. He offered me the heart shaped cookie with the chocolate chips on top. I have tasted kindergarten cookies before, after all, Guy is my forth child, plus I don’t exactly dislike cookies. Understandably, my enthusiasm was as high as my expectation was, namely none. However, when your kid offers you a cookie, you take the cookie, put it in your mouth, chew, swallow, and praise. I picked it up and prepared my speech. “Guy”, I thought I would say, “this is a great cookie, well done! thanks for sharing it with me”. However, the scenario came out a little different.
I put the cookie in my mouth, and my surrounding environment changed at once. I was six years old, sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen, waiting anxiously for the new batch of cookies to come out of the oven. I was able to smell the fresh cookies, I was able to see her wrinkled face, her house robe, her kind smile, and her green kitchen cabinets. Instead of praising Guy’s cookie, I found myself telling him that I wished Grandma Deborah had known him. I told him that she would have loved him as soon as she saw him. I told him that Grandma Deborah loved all her grandchildren, but that she loved me most.
When someone talks to me about time travel, and I must admit that it didn’t happen is quite sometime, I always imagined a machine with knobs and meters, with some smoke coming out from underneath, and some future technology. I didn’t imagine cookies.
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