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Summary of the lessons I’ve Learned in the Past Year by Reading my Email
Thanks to whoever sent me the email about poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet towel with every envelope that needs sealing.
In addition, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open.
I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.
I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program.
I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St Theresa's novena has granted my every wish.
I have learned that my prayers get answered ONLY if I make a wish within five minutes and forward an email to seventeen of my friends within an hour. And if I don't, a fate worse than death will happen to me.
I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.
I no longer buy gasoline without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won't crawl in my back seat when I'm pumping gas.
I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.
I can't boil a cup of water in the microwave for fear it will blow up in my face, disfiguring me for life.
I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a cologne sample and rob me.
I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don't support our American
troops or the Salvation Army.
I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore and Uzbekistan.
I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.
I can't use anyone's toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt.
I can't ever pick up a $5 bill in a parking lot because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg.
If you don't send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 7 minutes,
a large dove with diarrhea will land on your head at 5:00 tomorrow afternoon and
the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's second husband's cousin's barber...
Oh, by the way...
A South American scientist from Argentina , after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with insufficient brain activity read their e-mail with their hand on the mouse. I wish I had been paid to get the results of THAT study.
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Have you ever been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, “Surely I do not look that old!” You’ll love this ….
My name is Alice Smith and I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new Dentist. I noticed his diploma hanging on the wall, with his full name. I remembered a tall handsome dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago. Could this be the same boy I had a secret crush on way back then?
Upon seeing him, I quickly discarded my notion, as he was a balding, gray-haired man with a deeply lined face. This man was too old to have been my classmate.
After he examined my teeth, I asked anyway. “ By any chance, did you attend Morgan High School?”
"Yes. Yes, I did. I'm a Mustang!” he gleamed with pride.
"When did you graduate," I asked.
"1959. Why do you ask?"
"You were in my class!" I exclaimed.
He looked at me closely and then that ugly, old, bald, wrinkled, fat-assed decrepit, gray-haired, son-of-a-bitch asked, "What did you teach?"
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Bobby’s cousin Carol sent these to us …
From a book called Disorder in the American Courts, things people actually said in court:
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shittin' me?
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
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This true story is well worth reading. You can find out more by googling Herman Rosenblat, who was bar mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
"Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen".
I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.
"Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
"No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood. She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.
"Don't call me Herman anymore." I said to my brothers. "Call me 94983."
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. "Son, she said softly but clearly, "I am sending you an angel." Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels.
There was only work, hunger and fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone; a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I
glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German.
"Do you have something eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated my question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid.
In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat -- a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her except that she understood Polish and seemed to me to be just a kind farm girl. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope w as in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
"Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving."
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned ... the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00am. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
At 8am, there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too.
Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived. I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to
send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved.
I served in the US Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I had opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England, called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date."
A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend, Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling
brown curls and green almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, "Where were you, during the war?" she asked softly.
"The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers."
I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
"There was a camp next to the farm." Roma continued. "I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day."
What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like", I asked.
He was tall, skinny, hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months."
My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. "Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?"
Roma looked at me in amazement. "Yes."
"That was me!"
I was ready to burst with joy and awe. I was flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel.
"I'm not letting you go," I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
"You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.
That day, she said yes.
And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
Herman Rosenblat,
Miami Beach, Florida
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The Trouble Tree
Author Unknown
The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence.
On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door he underwent an amazing transformation. His tanned face was wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss.
Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.
"Oh, that's my trouble tree," he replied." I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them on the tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again."
He paused. "Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick 'em up, there ain't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before."
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On Growing Old Older …
Sent to me by Jane Bradley
The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, she was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let her know.
Old Age, I decided, is a gift.
I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body -- the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the sagging butt. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror (who looks like my mother!), but I don't agonize over those things for long.
I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4am and sleep until noon?
I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60&70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ... I will.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.
Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is
pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here; I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it!)
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The Jewish Funeral
Sent to me by Karen Zavon who grew up with me in Great Neck, New York. This is sooooo Great Neck ....
Sam died. His will provided $50,000 for an elaborate funeral. As the last attendee left, Sam's wife Rose turned to her oldest friend Sadie and said, "Well, I'm sure Sam would be pleased."
"I'm sure you're right," replied Sadie, who leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Tell me, how much did it really cost?"
"All of it," said Rose, "fifty thousand."
"No!" Sadie exclaimed. "I mean, it was very nice, but really... $50,000?"
Rose nodded. "The funeral was $6,500. I donated $500 to the shul for the Rabbi's services. The shiva food and drinks were another $500. The rest went for the memorial stone."
Sadie computed quickly. "$42,500 for a memorial stone? Oy vey, how big is it?"
"Seven and a half carats!”
Jay & the Elephant
In 1986, Jay Turnbull was on vacation in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University .On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Jay approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Jay worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face Jay and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Jay stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually, the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Jay never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.
Twenty years later, Jay was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Jay and his son Billy were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Jay, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at Jay.
Remembering the encounter in 1986, Jay couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Jay summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Jay's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.
Probably wasn't the same elephant.
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