Wee Tales of my Life

Kikarun, er hat ayn pintel affen nas!

That’s what they said, the boys and girls next door, the religious ones, with their peyot flying and their tsitsit hanging out.  Look, he has a point on his nose.  That was me, with my blue dot on the side of my nose.

I don’t know why it fascinated them.  You could hardly see it.  I never thought about it unless people pointed it out, like those religious kids.

How did it get there?  Nobody else had one.  None of the boys in my class or the gang that played games on the street.  It didn’t matter to them. 

Not even my parents talked about it, or other relatives, like grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts or the close friends of my parents who were just like members of the family.  They had other funny stories about when I was a baby and a toddler.  But nothing about my blue dot, the mysterious pintel affen nas.

Though nobody talked about, I somehow knew why it was there.

I fell and almost poked my eye out, if the point of the blue pencil had just been a half inch higher and to the left slightly. 

Surely, someone must have noticed, if I cried out in pain.  My mother, all alone, since my father had departed for the war, would have panicked or called a doctor.  The next day or so someone surely would have given me a warning to be careful about such things. 

But only those religious children next door, with their melodious chant, kikaru, kikarun, they sang, er hat a pintel affen nas.

The Fatal Brew

I was studying for the end of term exams.  I propped myself up on the bed with three pillows, leaned over my books, read and occasionally scribbled notes on a large yellow legal pad, the kind I loved to use.  From time to time, I dipped the pen into the water-glass on the desk beside the bed.  On the other wise, the bed was empty, as my room-mate had gone home for the long weekend Thanksgiving holiday.  I had stayed behind to put in extra hours of study. 

Almost no one else was left in the dormitories, both male and female.  Anyone who might have changed his or her mind, well, they were out of luck.  The blizzard had come, and now the little village where the college nestled in its valley, was closed off from the outside world. 

I was able to concentrate completely, barely looking up as I dipped my pen into the water, shook it dry, and drew in some other colour ink.  I liked to vary the colours as I scribbled my notes.  No particular scheme for different themes or approaches.  Just to rbeak the page up.  Dip, shake, and draw in red or green or black.  Hour after hour.  Page after page.

Then I knew I was beyond drowsy.  My eyes could hardly stay open.  My brain seemed heavy and thick.  It was surely time for sleep.

I changed into pyjamas, glanced over the notes, and took a sip of water.

And another sip and lay down ready for sleep.

But suddenly my eyes opened.  What had I done?  I had emptied the glass on the desk, the mixture of various inks.  It must have been poison, though there had been no particular odour or taste.  A whole glassful of ink.

Instead of panicking or crying out for help, I relaxed.  No use fighting what was inevitable.  If this was to be my end, then so be it. 

Alone, isolated, out of reach of any aid, I lay back, closed my eyes, and waited for the final sleep to come over me.

‘Twas a Dark and Gloomy Night

The snow had been falling all day.  More than falling, it had swept across the road horizontally, occasionally from the side but often directly at us, with the windscreen wipers barely able to carve out a space through which to see.  My father insisted on driving, even though he no more experience of such conditions than I. 

He drove cautiously, slowly onwards, at 70 mph and then 65 mph and now 60 mph while around us, from either side, other vehicles and heavy trucks hurtled forward to pass our car.  They may have been familiar with these highways and driven through blizzards before, but still it was crazy, especially when the darker it became the more blinding headlights streaked up to us and then went by, making our car shudder with the pressure. 

We were somewhere in Ohio and heading towards Missouri.  It was late October and this was an early storm, unexpected, not warned in the AAA triptik maps we had received two days before.  The wind howled.  The snow fell.  The traffic kept coming at us and passing us, all out of the darkness.  It seemed a long time since there was any road signs, any indication of where we were and how far we might have to go to find a motel for the night or a café for a little hot food and a rest at least.

Neither of us said anything.  The tension, however, was palpable.  And the hours dragged by.  It would not be long, too, before we would need to find a gas station and fill up.

At the beginning of the trip I asked to share the driving but my father said no: he wouldn’t feel safe.  An insult, but he was my father.  I was only twenty-two.  He was taking me to Saint Louis to return to my first year of graduate school.  He insisted on driving me all the way, so he could see where I lived, meet my friends, and look around the university.  My mother was still too ill and weak to travel. 

Occasionally we would see a car or a small truck stuck in the drifts on the side of the road.  Then my father would slow down even more.  We had been driving all day, with one brief stop for gas and lunch.  We were now going at 50 mph, even 45 mph or less, and still traffic would zoom towards us or pass us, honking their horns. 

The headlights provided nothing better than a few feet of vision.  The snow was more like long needles or arrows of ice.  We were inching along.  Crawling.  Then we stopped altogether.  Nothing could be seen at all.  A white darkness all around.  We sat and waited for something to happen. 

Eventually the night passed.

At the End of Time

In the movies, the elevator shudders, the cable breaks, and the car begins to fall: then the screen goes red.

On the radio, someone shouts, Stop! there is the sound of squealing breaks, then Whopp! and everything goes silent.  After a while, you can hear the murmuring of policemen and ambulance drivers.  Then silence again.

In the distance, there is a rumbling and a roar.  I feel a bump.  My mind goes blank.

An Afternoon in LAX: A Good Way to Waste an Afternoon

The notices on the flight board turn and turn, and the latest news is that my flight will be delayed at least another hour.  That means two hours to waste.

I walk down the long corridor again, stand next to the left luggage with its row on row of  boxes to rent, each with a key waiting to receive enough coins to give you some relief from carrying your luggage.  I lean against the wall.

Someone waves.  It is a middle-aged woman behind a counter marked Travellers Friend.  I walk up to her.  She smiles.  She tells me there is a bus that goes all around the airport, stopping at each airline’s building.  You can waste an hour or so, and you can sit down too.  Good chance to look around. 

What the heck, I think.

I get in the bus and sleepily look at the travellers who get on and off, who stand with their luggage, who check their watches.  The bus goes on, stops, and then moves around.

In the distance I hear sirens.

The sounds get louder.

We come around to the place where I first got on.  There  is a commotion.  Fire engines, police cars, ambulances.  Crowds of people standing across the road watching.

The left luggage compartments are twisted and black are blackened.  The desk where the Travellers Friend desk stood has broken into several pieces and is charred.  The woman is not there.