Excerpts from a Conversation

[gnomi]

(My parental units are spending February in Israel. They call periodically to check in. And they're returning to the States on 1 March. All these snippets actually occurred in the conversation I just had with them.)

Abba = my father
Ima = my mother
Me = uh...me

Snippet 1:

Abba: So, I have my US cell phone with me, so I'll likely call when we get to New York.
Me: OK, good. And hopefully you won't have the weather problems you had going out.
Abba: Well, weather won't be as much of a problem, even if we're delayed, since the connections aren't as critical.
Me: Yes, you could always hop another flight. Heck, you could take the Delta Shuttle if need be.
Abba: Or the train. Or a {mumble}.
Me: A what? A SQUID?
Abba: A squid? Nah, that would be wet and sloppy.
Me: No, not a squid, a SQUID. A...whatzis Quantum Interference Device. What's the "S" stand for again?
Abba: Synchronous? Something.
Me: [IMs mabfan, gets answer] mabfan says Superconducting.
Abba: You're with mabfan? I called you at work.
Me: Ah, the joys of modern communication. I've got an IM window open to him.

Eventually, Abba hands the phone to Ima.

Snippet 2:

Ima: So, we've been all over, with lots of different cab drivers.
Me: Oh?
Ima: Have you ever had the cab driver take both hands off the wheel at the same time? While still talking on his cell phone?
Me: No, I can't say that I have.
Ima: And tomorrow we're heading up to [kibbutz where friends of my mom from high school live].
Me: Travel safe.
Ima: [more details of their less-than-perfectly-careful travels]
Me (after a moment or two more of this): Uh, Ima? This is one of those conversations I'd rather have after you return home safely, OK?
Ima: You mean like "by now you must've heard about our bomb"?
Me: Yes, just like that.

Snippet 3:
Ima: It's getting late; I'm heading to bed right after I hang up.
Me: OK. Keep me in mind, OK? Because it's not 3:00 in the afternoon where you are, so you'll be going to sleep-sleep, right?
Ima: Yes.
Me: So, if you are yotzei me now, I can get a good solid couple of hours of sleep before I leave work.
Ima: Yes. Definitely.


My parents -- They're loony, and I love 'em for it. :-)

Comments

[bbennett.livejournal.com]

You need to save these for an anniversary or something. :)

[bbennett.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I meant an anniversary party or some such for your parents (antibiotics make me sleepy :p).

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

My mom keeps saying that one of these days she's going to wander into my LJ, so she'll see them, but yeah -- keeping them for future reference is a good idea. Thanks.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*giggles madly*

Now I want to travel by squid!

(Tangent: the Abarat books have squid that help seeing, instead of binoculars. Of course, it's hell on hats to have a squid on your head...)

[seborn.livejournal.com]

I first read that to mean seeing-eye squid. Not that squid as binoculars are less weird.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

hmmm. a seeing-eye squid would be just the thing for a blind mermaid.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

That's such an odd little image...

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

which is exactly why i had to share it, once it popped into my head. :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Squid-back rides sound fun, if vaguely sloppy.

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Ima: You mean like "by now you must've heard about our bomb"?

I'm laughing, but not at the bomb. O.O

This reminds me of Beth's family in Israel.

(And incidentally, M will be calling Beth "Ima" when she can call Beth anything at all *g*)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Nah, the bomb is something to laugh at, at least in retrospect.

I'm gonna have to do a post explaining it in full one of these days, but the upshot is this: When beckyfeld was in Israel on her year abroad, we at one point got a letter from her. Four pages long, it went on for 3.5 pages about the touring they'd been doing, her classes, the fact that the food in the dorm sucked, etc. On the bottom of page 4 was a final note -- "by now you must've heard about our bomb. Love, Becky."

Ima's reaction was, "Bomb? What bomb?" And her first question to Becky when she called that Sunday was, "Bomb? What bomb?"

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

hee!

I guess she wanted to focus on the good news. :D

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

When my mom asked her about the bomb, Becky reported that there had been a bomb planted in the bus stop in front of their dorm (because...well, that gets into inter-group Jewish politics, but let's just say that there were those who were objecting to the amount of skin showing in certain bus-stop ads) and when it went off, it blew out windows in the dorm's cafeteria. Because it was the middle of the night, no one was in the cafeteria and no one got hurt. It was all property damage. But the students on the program had been told that an official letter would go out to the parents, informing them of the incident, so Becky figured that, by the time my parents received her letter, they would've received the letter from the program. No letter actually was sent by the program, and thus the surprise of the line in Becky's letter.

And, from up-thread, yay for M calling Beth "Ima" when she gets around to calling anyone anything. Are you going to be "Mommy," or something else?

[tygerseye.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am going to be Mommy. I remember when I sat down with Beth and said "What do you think M should call us?" I was dreading that she would say "mommy" because I really wanted to be mommy. Instead, she said, "I was thinking she should call me Ima," and then explained to me that it was Hebrew, etc. and that was that. We were both happy. :D

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I used to, though I don't remember it, call my parents "Mommy" and "Daddy." I don't remember when they became Ima and Abba, but now that's how I think of them. Not only that, a large number of my friends call them Ima and Abba, because I hit a point when I was in late highschool that I was really unsure of how to introduce my parents. I felt uncomfortable introducing them by their first names, but at the same time I didn't feel right introducing them as "These are my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pearlman." So I started saying "This is Ima and Abba," assuming my parents would tell my friends what they wanted to be called. Of course, my parents were fine being called Ima and Abba by people other than their daughters, so a whole bunch of Becky's and my friends call them Ima and Abba (or Ima and Abba Pearlman, if they have their own Ima and Abba).

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I never heard about any bus-shelter bombs, but there were several that were set on fire, and I remember the press blaming the haredim for it, but then the police caught the arsonists, and they turned out to be secular feminists. The haredim had their own vandalism brigade, but they weren't setting any fires, they were just spraypainting the offending posters, and thus not endangering anyone, or doing any more property damage than was strictly necessary from their POV.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Well,if nothing else, this conversation explains a great deal about you, ma'am! ;)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeedy. I come by my looniness honestly. :-)

By the way, mabfan and I just returned from a lovely dinner with a friend we first met through you because, as we were told at the time, "scarlettina Demanded It."

[cellio]

Me: So, if you are yotzei me now, I can get a good solid couple of hours of sleep before I leave work.

I don't think that works, unfortunately. Or if it does, someone could make a small fortune setting up matches between people in different time zones! Gee, does it transfer -- can someone in Hawaii turn around and be yotzei through you? (I don't think so, actually.)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, alas it doesn't actually work that way. We joke about it, though.

This actually was an issue last shabbat, as it happens. Last shabbat, mabfan and I were at a science fiction convention. I (unlike many of my frum peers) am uncomfortable lighting shabbat candles in a hotel room, not only because it violates fire laws. So what I do for licht bentching on weeks that I'm at a hotel is that I usually ask my mother to keep me in mind when she lights. With her in Israel, her shabbat came in 7 hours earlier than mine, and had she kept me in mind I had the feeling I'd have to start keeping shabbat 7 hours earlier. Therefore, I asked a local friend (lucretia_borgia) to keep me in mind instead.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

and here i was just about to ask what "yotzei" means, exactly...but your comment illustrates it beautifully for me. :)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

"Yotzei" is from the root meaning "to remove" or "to take out." The connotation is that she is removing me from my obligation.

[kuroshii.livejournal.com]

oh wow. OK, that is actually not what i thought it meant. i'd guessed the focus was on the taking on of someone's spiritual burden, not the removal (by your doing so) of someone else's.

the difference basically comes down to semantics, but "these things" seem to be written in very fine-lined ink the older the book's religion. ;) there could be a decent-sized spiritual (karmic? to mix metaphors) deal between my taking on your burden, and your burden being removed by me. one involves my path, the other involves yours.

or am i just talking into my hat.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

"a squid? nah, that would be wet and sloppy."

heee! i giggle like a loon. so silly. ^_^

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Yay for giggling like a loon!

My parents and I frequently have conversations like this. Like scarlettina says, it explains a lot.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

I can just hear Ima saying all this. Thanks for the post-shabbas-cooking laugh.

BTW, sorry to be brain-dead this afternoon. Chalk it up to fonts not working on Ubuntu and child blithely peeing on the carpet just as you were calling.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Glad to provide a laugh. My parents amuse me mightily.

And no worries about the brain-dead-ness. I was sort of squishy-headed myself. I hope you got your fonts figured out (your child, on the other hand, is harder to figure out).

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Sounds perfectly normal to me... but I (happily) know your parents. :-)

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. I think the fact that it was such a typical conversation is what struck me. Even from 6,000 miles away, we still have the same bizarre conversations we have when I'm talking to them from only 20 miles away.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

The miracles of modern technology!