Who Knew?

Charles Heston was a Jew?

Oh, Passover, you are so involved, so detail-oriented, so three weeks away, you make the SJG want to hide like the afikomen. I turn around and you're back again so soon. Didn't I just set the table for you? This year, I'm doing Early Bird Passover (patent pending). Why wait till the first night when I can do it the night before the first night? Turns out, when it comes to Passover, I can pretty much do whatever I want. Turns out, I'm the boss of me.

If only I'd arrived at that realization a little sooner. Like elementary school. A while back, I was having lunch with my childhood pal Albert. I've known him since Warner Avenue, which probably explains why we act eight years old when we're together. We are silly and goofy and sometimes our memories of certain events don't quite sync up. He's still apologizing for that time he forgot to come to my birthday party -- he'd left the invitation in his desk at school. I have absolutely no recollection of his horrendous breach of etiquette, but I keep forgiving him, anyway. "It's okay, I'm over it.  Let it go. Let's focus on something else you did that was far worse. Remember when you served mushy matzoh brei at the 9th Grade Brainy People Brunch?" "That wasn't me." "It wasn't?" "No, it was you." "Oh, right. I tend to block out the incident that prompted my extended stay at Jewvy Hall."

After fressing at Art's Deli, we took a walk and decided how fun it would be to go back in time and take on the bad guys we once let walk all over us. Our late-50s, kick-ass attitudes would give us the confrontational chutzpah we lacked back then. Which leads me back to Passover, believe it or not.  Passover is all about escaping the bad guys. But then, so many Jewish holidays share a similar theme: "Run!" Let's face it. The bad guys are everywhere. Sometimes they're three dimensional, sometimes symbolic like a Seder plate. Either way, they enslave us. (See what I did there?) So this Passover -- only three weeks away, but who's counting -- I'm sending the bad guys, metaphorical and otherwise, on an exodus outta town.  There's no place for them at my table... or yours.