I am blogging for 30 Days ‘Til 30 because I find it challenging to define who I am and think this exercise may help; I’m like an orgasm–difficult to describe but everybody loves having me! However, there are two words that if push comes to smack in the face, encapsulate so much of who I think I am. Two words that, just my luck, are part of a dying language. They are the Yiddish words schlemiel and schlimazel. If you’ve ever seen the opening sequence to “Laverne and Shirley” you may be familiar with them.
Just an FYI you should totally watch “Laverne and Shirley.” And then tell me about it since I only have Netflix Insta-stream but it is only available to rent on DVD.
The best description of these two words is: the schlemiel is the one who spills the coffee, the schlimazel is the one who gets spilled on. Call me meshuggener, but I think I play both these roles. Don’t miss my one act play, coming soon.
The schlemiel is extremely clumsy. That’s me. I literally have spilled soup on myself (and almost everything I eat). Things just seem to drop out of my hand. Like this morning’s breakfast.
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| That was my last egg 🙁 |
Or glasses of water–all the time. I drop things in all types of weird places. Like my sports bra in the toilet.
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| I guess this counts as washing it, right? |
As a little schlemiel, I remember feeling mortified when I broke the scale in a small pet store. I just wanted to touch it–I’m very hands on–and down it came crashing. I felt equally as bad the time milk shot from nose, into my cousin’s eyes, at a family sedar. They all laughed while I just cried.
In high school I sprained my ankle in the most timid of all gym electives, walking. Yes, I signed up to take “walking” and even that proved hazardous. When I lived in Washington DC I almost lost my life on that most famous street, Pennsylvania Ave., when I tripped mid-crosswalk in front of a large city bus. Every single time I talk on the phone with my mom and a horn honks in the background she instinctively asks in fear, “was that at you?!” And she’s right to worry; it often is. In a similar but not similar at all situation, I almost lost my life when in attempts to sit at my table at Nobu (I could only afford to go there because it was Restaurant Week), I knocked over an entire bottle of red wine that was on the table next to me. Not only did I knock it over, but it went right into the lap of a man whose death stare still haunts me sometimes when I close my eyes.
I’ve always been too afraid to try stand-up but I’m thinking I should give it a go since I would kill at that mic-drop. Or even better, I should just try and make the glass drop happen.