Traditional Jewish Jokes and Anecdotes, No. 15

Birds Do It

Two old men sit on a park bench, as they always do every week on a Wednesday in the late afternoon, when the sky is clear and the wind not too strong. They have known each other for years, but not very much about their lives outside of these meetings.

One plays with his walking stick, making little circles in the gravel.  The other scratches his beard.  They are quiet for a while.

“You know, Moish, a person gets old, forgets many things, and yet the time goes so quickly there is no time to think about anything.”

“Nu,” says Izzie, “what else is new?”

“Look at that bird over there,” he says, pointing with his stick.  “I bet that it’s the same fliggleh we see every week.”

Izzie looks at the bird.

“The same bird?” he says.

Moish ponders and then says: “Well, so maybe not exactly.  Maybe they all look alike.”

“Not alike,” Izzie answers. “How many years we’ve been meeting like this?”

“So who knows?  Ten years, fifteen, a long time.”

“You know what that means?”

“What kind of means is that?” asks Moish.

“It means, nebech, in bird time, that this is probably five generations after the first time we saw this bird.”

“And that’s a meaning by you?”

Izzie nods his  head: “So maybe yes, maybe no.  But it makes you think.”

They are both silent for a few minutes, nothing new for them.  Much of their conversations consist of silence.

Moish then asks: “So what were we talking about?”

Izzie twists his neck around a few times to get the blood moving into his head: “We were talking?”

“Birds,” says Moish.

“So what else is new?”

“Birds is a funny kind of creatures,” says Moish.

“Funny for what?” asks Izzie.

“They don’t have hands.”

“This is important by you?”

“They hop around.”

Both are silent again.

“If I were a bird,” says Moish, “you know what?”

“What should I know?”

“I would keep a record of what I eat.”

“For why, excuse me if I ask?”

“Then I wouldn’t forget,” Moish says.

“Does it matter?”

“No, but it would be something to do.”

“You need something to do?”

“Why not?”

“If I were a bird, it wouldn’t matter.  I would just eat.”

“That’s what they do, these fliggelech.”

More silence.

Moish says, “If we were birds, it wouldn’t matter.”

“So what matters now?”

“That we talk.”

“Yes, it makes life interesting.”

More silence.

“Nu, so it’s time to go.”

“Be well. And I will see you next week maybe?”

“God willing.”

Two old men get up and walk slowly away in different directions.  

Each one in his head thinks, “So this is life.  Why not?”