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February 13, 2006

Heigh-ho!

Yesterday was one of three annual "work days" at Elijah's school. The director informed us upon enrollment that we must attend at least two of these or else face financial penalty. As we've increasingly learned, Elijah's school is a commitment. It almost shut down a few years ago, and apparently will be recovering forever. There are endless fundraisers and committee meetings and surprise little fees laying all over the place. Plus each family has to give 15 volunteer hours to the center a year, in addition to the work days, or else face further financial penalty.

On the one hand, how can you possibly turn down such a cause? Here's a struggling Jewish community trying to bring itself up out of the ashes of bankruptcy. Working on the center, as part of a social contract, translates into one of the highest forms of charity, according to the Talmudic law pamphlet I read recently while waiting for a chicken kabob sandwich at a kosher deli in San Francisco. On the other hand, volunteer work can be a huge pain in the ass.

However, I have to admit that I was touched yesterday when I arrived to see the JCC dads working hard on spraypainting the graffiti off the front of the building. Other guys were cleaning windows or changing lightbulbs in the gymnasium, while one guy spent three hours, seemingly without break, raking leaves out of the playground sand. Just as many mothers performed just as many tasks. I'm not particularly good at anything, so I got assigned to do a "table inspection" while Regina made new labels for the cubbyholes in Elijah's classroom. If we'd gotten there any earlier or any later, I probably would have spent the day painting, or at least gotten assigned to paint. Elijah wasn't letting me do much of anything. You know you've been on a business trip for a few days when your son wants to accompany you on a mission to jiggle tabletops. Eventually, I pitched the work and started chasing him around the gym. He found it hilarious if he rolled a basketball and I hit it with another basketball. Also, he taunted me while I attempted to make free throws.

"I bet you can't make it...." he said, over and over again. And when I did, on occasion, make one, he still insisted that I hadn't made one. Is there a job waiting for him at the Department Of Defense?

A little later, I found myself outside, scrubbing down some chairs with industrial cleaner. A mother from another class, who I'd never met before, approached.

"Do they have anything more organic?" she said. "You know, like they sell at Target?"

"This is it," I said, indicating my bottle of Krud Kleaner, "but we use that Target stuff at home."

"I don't clean my own house," she said, too quickly.

"Oh," I said.

Then she seemed to gather her guilt a little.

"It's a treat I gave myself."

I don't have a problem with people hiring maids. I would do it myself, at least once a month or so, if it was in my budget. Housework can be a real drag, and it's the last thing you want to do after a day's work. Evidence of this can be found in our bedroom hallway, which is full of baskets of clean laundry and unpacked moving boxes, and in our bathroom sinks, whose drain apparati are crusted with toothpaste scum. Also, I must not neglect to mention the continual light dusting of cat litter that helps point our household toward a better tomorrow.

But I don't like it when people try to justifiy their "help" by referring to it as a treat. I got drunk and high after my show in Seattle the other night and I bought a Snickers bar at a convenience store. That was a treat. Cleaning people are luxuries.

In general, we feel a slight amount of class separation between the other families at Elijah's school and us. There are many nannies afoot, and also a kind of lax attitude about school hours. Regina took Elijah to Griffith Park last Friday. To celebrate Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish festival of trees, they had Shabbat in the park. Regina found this inconvenient, but she's not Jewish, and I assured her that having this ceremony in the park was a nice gesture to a semi-pagan holiday.

So they went and they sang songs. Afterward, everyone stood around talking. Regina hauled ass back to school because she had work she needed to do that day. When she got there, one other mom had arrived. It was nearly a half-hour before Elijah's teachers and the other parents showed up, at it was nearly 10:30 before Regina left. Again, it's nice that the community here is so welcoming that people would want to stand around for an hour talking to other parents in the park on a schoolday. And we really do like the school. It's charming, thoughtful, and fun. We're still just getting used to the customs of this strange country.

Why, Regina almost missed her yoga class! Oh, woe is us!

Posted by at 11:47 AM |

Comments

If I had a maid I'd try to have sex with her.

Posted by: Ed | February 13, 2006 2:53 PM

If you had ours you wouldn't..

Posted by: demasession | February 14, 2006 3:34 AM

This is a charming thread.

Posted by: Neal Pollack | February 14, 2006 7:59 AM

I work long, hard, steamy hours for cheap...

Posted by: Will | February 14, 2006 8:43 AM

...but only for rich fundie white women...

Posted by: Will | February 14, 2006 8:44 AM

One good way to make it even more difficult to get health insurance (or life insurance) for yourself is to make publicly available admissions about getting high. Still worse, you admit that you eat Snickers bars. Who wants to insure someone who voluntarily ingests partially hydrogenated peanut oil byproducts?

As for the mother who engages a cleaning service, are you sure it's a luxury? In your neck of the woods, aren't there untold flocks of illegal immigrants who supposedly do backbreaking work for a pittance, or even for Snickers bars? Maybe that mother exploits desperate young women from south of the border. Maybe she has an illegal gardener named Mariano. Maybe her guilt is deeper than you know.

Anyway, you your description of her offhand comment vaguely reminded me of David Sedaris's description of wealth speaking carelessly in "The Ship Shape" from Dress Your Family: "My house, well, one of my houses . . . ."

Next stop This American Life?

Posted by: L. Ron Hoover | February 14, 2006 9:19 AM

I ate ONE Snickers bar. When I was high. This is not a health trend.

And yes, I suppose that the woman in question has a domestic slave of sorts.

Posted by: Neal Pollack | February 14, 2006 9:52 AM

COULD have a domestic slave of sorts.

Posted by: Neal Pollack | February 14, 2006 9:52 AM

A snickers bar, huh? That's a health question mark these days? What has the world come to? What about eating a large meat lovers pizza and then inhaling an entire batch of cookie dough...followed by more bong hits and cigarrete smoke..washed down with a couple Lone Stars? That's healthy living. Insurance companies-start your bids!

Posted by: Will | February 14, 2006 4:34 PM

Is "cigarrete" like concrete, only made of cigarettes? Mmmm. Hard tobacco-y goodness.

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