Baile Rochel's Back!

Baile Rochel’s Back! #1
Purim, just in time!

Yes I’m Back!

I just have to be careful how I pound that keyboard right now. My nail polish is still wet. “Nail polish,” some of you may be muttering. The Baile Rochel we all knew and loved didn’t polish anything, certainly not nails!

Don’t worry, I haven’t changed that much. My nails give my students something to look at, instead of the windows, blackboard, of course their books. Another innovation to keep my students’ attention on the “new me,” is a third earring, absolutely the perfect solution for “aguna” earrings, deserted by their fickle partners.

Some of you may be confused. The old Baile Rochel didn’t have sedentary students. I was a gym teacher. The “new Baile Rochel,” with additional padding, is an English teacher, for high school boys, no less. I’ve exchanged little girls who wouldn’t wear sneakers for big boys who won’t do homework and pantomime for calisthenics.

I still don’t do the windows. Of course, I have a very good excuse. They’re poorly designed, and it’s almost impossible to reach them, and the others are barricaded behind furniture. Like for example, do you really think that I can move the computer? That would require unplugging everything, and even more impossible, replugging the whole thing again. Do you honestly think that I know what goes where? My fingers go on the keyboard and I can turn it on and off. Isn’t that enough.

Well, it has been a long time, and some of you may not have even known me way back when. Then my youngest was a toddler, and now he’s finishing army service. The biggest change is that I’m a grandmother to a toddler. She doesn’t call me “grandma;” that’s still reserved for my mother, ad me’ah v’esrim, she should live to a hundred and twenty, just forty years and a couple of months to go. She deserves some extra credit, so you can add on a few more.

My granddaughter doesn’t call me “bubby,” either. She calls me “Savta,” but she also calls her other grandmother “Savta,” which I find very confusing. But I remember what my friend told me when my daughter got engaged. She told me that she was going to teach me a trick. I had to close my mouth and my lips, real tight, lock them all shut, and I’d be a very good shvigger.

Some things haven’t changed much. Some things haven’t changed all that much. Way back when, almost twenty years ago, I described how we moved into this house, book by book. And I made it very clear, that the pictures are up, so we’re not going! And since then even more pictures are up, and only less than two years ago I finally had Venetian blinds put on the living room windows, believe you me, I’m not moving.

Of course, according to the news, things look a bissel different, but you know the saying: “Everything’s true except for the things you know about personally.” Actually, we’re seriously thinking of expanding the house, so there’ll be room for everyone to visit. Ok, we’re imprisoned in an insane asylum, and we’re the only sane ones.

It’s all going to work out. I’ve been studying T’hilim (Psalms) and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and King David was also persecuted. He kept this “blog” diary, in which he wrote his thoughts, fears and prayers. Afterwards, a hundred and fifty of them were found and collected, and today that’s what we call T’hilim. In chapter 7, 16 King David wrote that the evil one will fall into his own trap, and in the end of Chapter 34, he reassures us that if we go with G-d, G-d will save us and punish the wicked.

Yes, King David wrote an ancient blog, and so did his son, Shlomo. Shlomo was actually quite a blogger, Kohelet, Mishlei and Shir Hashirim. I guess that he had the state of the art laptop of his day. I wonder how many hits a week he got; a lot more than my blogs get for sure.

Baile Rochel