What a relief! The High Holiday season is over, and I can start committing sins again!
“But seriously,” I said to my friend Millie, “we atoned for so many things in that service! All that long list of sins we read — even in the English version, I lost track!”
We were in my house a week later, conversing over tea.
“Yes,” Millie replied. “Like ‘being stiff-necked.’ Why is that a sin? I always assumed it had something to do with headaches.”
“Me, too!” I said. “Then there’s ‘devising evil.’ What does that mean? Making booby-traps for pigeons? Selling shares in a Ponzi scheme? An assassination plot? The worst thing I’ve done, all year, is waiting for everyone else to sign up for snack nights, hoping I wouldn’t have to help them!”
“Plus, there are a lot of sins that I’ve never committed,” said Millie. “If I have to atone for them, I might as well commit them!”
“It would be a sin not to!” I agree. “Which reminds me, there’s brandy in that cupboard. Shall we?”
“Why not? That will take care of ‘sinning through food and drink.’”
“Maybe even ‘losing self-control!’ ” I say, as I slosh a slug into each of our tea-cups. “What did you make of ‘We ridicule the ones we love?’”
“Oh, I haven’t done that in years! Not since my brother got rid of his dopey ‘Don’t Worry Get Happy’ sweatshirt.”
“What about this one? ‘We act perversely’? That covers a lot of ground.”
“You’re not kidding,” says my husband who just happened by and took some cookies I had opened along with the booze. “That describes everything you do!”
“Like what?”
“Like the time you waved my toothbrush over the toilet to prove something — I think to show that you weren’t accident-prone.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Millie.
“It fell in!” he said.
“Once! One time! And you’ve never forgiven me!”
“And now you can atone for that,” he said.
“ That’s ‘Failure to let go of grudges!’ ” I yell at my husband’s back as he leaves the room.
“Oooh, holding grudges! That’s a good one,” says Millie. “How many times have you ranted to me about people who leave their shopping carts out in the parking lot, where you have to park around them? And yet, do you bring them back to the store yourself?”
“At least I put them up on the grass,” I mutter. “I’m not an animal.”
“And you’re pretty rude about drivers who slow down in front of you, at the end of a yellow light, so that they make it through but you don’t.”
“Well, some of those red lights last forever!” I reply.
“Hmmm. ‘We are hostile’,” Millie reads out of the prayer book, “and we are stubborn.’ Sound like anybody you know?”
“Nope.”
My problem is, some of them completely cancel each other out. “Look at these: ‘Intrusiveness; over-involvement; manipulation’ — that just sounds like a job description for being a Jewish mother! But then, a few sins later, it says ‘Failure to give time and attention to people in my life’ — so which is it? They can’t have it both ways! And if everything’s a sin, why bother trying?”
“Here’s a good one,” says Millie: “ ‘We have done wrong through dishonesty in business dealings’.”
“So I counted my overdue library fines as business expenses. Is that so wrong?”
“Judy, you lead such a boring life! If this is the best — I mean the worst — you can do, you need to get out there and do some real sinning!”
“Okay,” I say, “as long as you’re sinning with me. I like these: ‘Overconsumption, materialism, and self-indulgence.’ I don’t think I’ve bought myself anything new since 2014! How about we go to Roosevelt Field, next week?”
“All right — as long as you promise not to steal any more parking spaces!”
“That was only because I couldn’t tell the other car was waiting for the space till I’d already pulled into it!”
“ ‘Discourtesy, ill-temper’ — you’d better let me drive, Judy.”
“Here’s one for you: ‘Intolerance of imperfection in others.’ Especially when they’re driving.”
“What about ‘Criticism? Gossip? and Bearing tales about others?’”…
“Without all of that,” I answered, “I could hardly write my columns!”
Just then, CRASH ZAP — lighting struck the end table right between us, leaving my notes for this column a smoking ruin.
Looks like it’s time to turn it in!
