What the hell? Stuck in gridlock caused by one of this summer's numerous unavoidable and pathetic Bandaid solutions for a crumbling infrastructure, I couldn't help but read the sign posted outside the local synagogue. It said: "Reconnect with your minivan."
First of all, I don't know any Jews who drive minivans, and secondly, how does one fallout with their minivan? And let's just say you and the minivan aren't seeing things eye-to-eye, does that really require a rabbi to intervene and patch things up? What the fuck? Maybe little Moishe puked up his matzoh in the backseat one too many times and the Dodge Caravan simply refused to fire up – I dunno. Jews are a funny lot – all those weird holidays and mealtime rituals. Fish, no fish, fish with scales and a glass of milk. Oy. Maybe someone rubbed their minivan the wrong way and it set off a hailstorm of grabbing the unleavened bread and rushing to the Mercedes dealer. Again, I dunno.
Upon second glance I realized the sign said "Reconnect with your minyan" to which I thought, what the hell is a minyan?
This was going to be a long day.
A minyan, I now know, is some sort of gathering of ten boys old enough (13) to know better. Sounds like my TV room on a rainy day. I don't get why anyone would want to reconnect with a group of 13-year old boys, unless maybe you are a Catholic priest, in which case the sign was in the wrong location. Besides, the definition I was reading started leaning a little too much toward the Wailing Wall so I left it at that.
In a similar fashion, I recently misconstrued several emails from a person claiming to be Ivy Ho. The emails were lying unopened in my spam filter, as I figured Ivy was, well, a ho, and having no need for a ho at this time, I left her lying there with the widow from Nairobi who wanted me to send her my bank account information because I had recently won the lottery. I really should send the widow my bank account information because she'd get a real kick out of the fact that it currently has a balance of $1.71.
As it turns out, Ivy Ho is a real person who, god help her, works for the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, a group of do-gooders dedicated to breathing some life back into our post-menopausal downtown core, now that everything has dried up and moved to Bayer's Lake.
Poor Ivy was just trying to invite me to Big Day Downtown, a cheeky little event designed to get local Havenot writers reconnecting with the area of downtown normally frequented by business people in bad suits, alcoholics, cougars, alcoholic cougars, and cruise ship refugees. Apparently Ivy hasn't read my blog, as the deal is, we get $100 bucks to blow on slot machines, or crack, or mussels, or art, or whatever the hell we feel like doing with $100 bucks in the asshole, er, heartbeat of our beautiful city. In turn, we have to write nice things about how wonderful it is to live in a city where you can bob for turds in the harbour after a heavy rainfall.
I can't wait.
So, I now have $100 bucks to blow downtown, and considering the current state of my bank account my first reaction was to head down to Nova Scotia Power and throw it all on my power bill – but what fun would that be? – and besides Ivy Ho may get all pissy and start sending me more emails.
Instead, I am going to reconnect with my downturn and vomit all over pizza corner. Or, get a tattoo. Or a ho.
Oy, the probabilities are fendless.
halifaxbroad@gmail.com
