During this season of Hanukkah, we are enjoined to be thankful for our many blessings. The following story illustrates one of the blessings for which I am thankful. I title this one, “Pushing past the urgent to deal with the important.” The time is 5:45 AM. David, being a prostate cancer survivor, rises from bed on a matter of some urgency. On his way to deal with the situation, he lets Avi, the dog, out of his crate and goes to the back door to let him out. Instead, the dog happily bounds into the bedroom and hops onto the bed to snuggle with his mistress. Calls for him garner no response. So, with his own sense of urgency rising, David goes to the bedroom and snatches the dog off the bed. Moving with alacrity, he heads for the back door. Brought on by the arrival of said poodle, Pia, David’s beloved wife, has arrived in the borderland between sleep and awake. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, but not its source, she says, “What’s wrong?” David, over his shoulder, replies, “Instead of going outside, he went in here.” The urgency having reached critical proportions, the dog is ejected and David retires to deal with the situation at hand. Fast-forward a few minutes… David, exiting the room of necessity, finds Pia standing at the foot of the bed with the lights on. She is peering at the floor. She looks up at him and says, “Where?” David, always swift on the uptake, says, “Instead of going outside when…” …Comes the dawn… “No… He didn’t go… I mean he went…” After some few seconds to further gather his wits about him, David says, “I opened his crate. Instead of proceeding outside, as expected, he proceeded to come in here. His malfeasance was operational rather than the inappropriate exercising of a bodily function.” Pia, by this time having killed the lights, has returned to bed, cuddled up with the culprit, and is softly snoring. Another misunderstanding created by cognate overloading and euphemism is averted. Blessed are you, Adonai, Sovereign of the Universe, for granting me words sufficient to clearly convey meaning. Happy Hanukkah!
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 12:53:00 +0000
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