I was thinking of the root of the word, “Embarrassed,” when I found the plumber I hired on our kitchen floor, squirming his heavy body in a pretzel-like contortion, as he tried to hook up the connection to the instant hot water faucet under the sink. I asked him if he was okay but when I saw his pants so far down that his big ass was sticking up, I realized that the word should have been spelled “Embareassed.”
I have had my share of embarrassing moments. Coming home from Dallas on a business trip to take my mom to a Sarah Brightman concert, I stood in the security line, hoping to go standby. The Northwest terminal was pretty quiet; the lines were short, as I began to lift up my suitcase and briefcase on the rollers. I took off my watch, emptied change from my pocket, and put my wallet and cell phone in the basket. I took off both my shoes and began to remove my belt. It seemed so still with the few people around me that my mind began to slip into another place. I must have thought I was in the quiet solitude of my bedroom when I removed my belt and started to lower my pants.
Suddenly, when I realized my pants were coming down, that I was stripping for the airport security cameras and personnel, I jumped back into the real world. I turned fast to see that no one was looking and lifted my pants quickly, buttoning everything back up. I pretended all was fine and moved quickly to my left, then went thru the standing x-ray, hoping no one had seen me. My face must have been burnt orange, the color of em-bare-ass-ment.
I began to think how many times I’ve been embarrassed, caught like a drowning fish out of water. I remember paddling with my daughter, Marlee, on a boat in the calm river waters of Stratford, Ontario, I came back to the concrete dock to get off the boat. I pulled up to the side of the dock and the young teenager who was working there gave his arm to pull me out. I lifted my body onto the dock and held onto his arm but either he let go or I did. I fell straight into the water as he looked down with a blank look on his face. I tried again to pull my hands onto the concrete dock and lift myself up but my clothes were soaked and the weight made it tough to pull. The boy looked at me as Judy and Ilana laughed heartily. This was one of those moments that could have won America’s Funniest Videos if we had only brought a camcorder.
I walked into town, soaking wet, looking for a shoe store, to buy a dry pair of shoes and socks. I had to take off wet Rockports before entering, I soaked the chair I sat on and bought the first shoes and socks I found. The rest of the clothes took hours to get drier, until I finally got to the hotel room, cold and wet but with dry socks and shoes. My daughters and wife still laugh today when they think about me, the balding, overweight middle-aged man falling into the river with all his clothes on. If they had their cell phones, they would have snapped pictures and video and played it on You Tube for the rest of the world to join in laughter. They could have played it over and over in slow motion and backwards for everyone to enjoy my embarrassment.
We can’t forget the embarrassments of our youth. I remember a good friend who locked himself in the schoolroom closet because his hair had been cut too short and another who had to wear a big dunce cap and a letter D around his neck in the corner of the third grade room. Locked in a corner of my mind is the vision of my second grade Hebrew teacher suddenly sprayed by a water gun and my third grade teacher locked into a closet by a student. I will never forget the embarrassment I felt when I brought my arms down hard and accidentally smacked a fifth grade classmate’s mouth into his desk, shattering his front tooth. And I can’t forget the embarrassment I felt when Judy prodded me to say hello to him in a Chinese restaurant 39 years later. “Remember me,” I said regretfully, “the guy who broke your tooth?” He couldn’t forget but told me that all was forgiven. So after almost 40 years, my embarrassment had finally been relieved.
Some embarrassments are not self-inflicted. When I walked out of a bathroom in a Subway restaurant, my family was laughing vociferously. When I asked them what’s so funny, they said, that Kyle, only a few years old at the time, had been asked where his dad was and loudly belted out for everyone in line and sitting at the tables to hear, “My dad is making a BM!”
I sometimes believe that my legacy, in the words of my children, will be “dad’s fart stories,” stories that they just love to tell. Marlee loves to tell the story of the time her friend was over our house watching TV on the couch. I was napping and didn’t know that anyone else was in the house when I let go a seismic gaseous explosion and my daughter’s little Russian friend cried out, “Mr. Goldman!” and my daughter, more embarrassed than me, said, “Dad, Sophia’s here.”
Today, this story is a source of great delight for her and I just hope she doesn’t tell it too often, although there’s something freeing about putting these embarrassments in print. As they say in politics, it’s better to admit your foibles rather than let others find out first. I don’t know if that would have helped Governor Spitzer of New York but it might have helped Bill Clinton avoid his famous line, “I did not have sex with that woman.”
I guess I’m still waiting for Barack Obama to admit that besides smoking, he likes to let out a fart once in a while. Then, I can tell my children that even great men need to sometimes relieve a little gas. And then they can turn to me and ask if I’m really comparing myself to the 44th President and fall down, holding their bellies in hilarity.
I was thinking of the root of the word, “Embarrassed,” when I found the plumber I hired on our kitchen floor, squirming his heavy body in a pretzel-like contortion, as he tried to hook up the connection to the instant hot water faucet under the sink. I asked him if he was okay but when I saw his pants so far down that his big ass was sticking up, I realized that the word should have been spelled “Embareassed.”
I have had my share of embarrassing moments. Coming home from Dallas on a business trip to take my mom to a Sarah Brightman concert, I stood in the security line, hoping to go standby. The Northwest terminal was pretty quiet; the lines were short, as I began to lift up my suitcase and briefcase on the rollers. I took off my watch, emptied change from my pocket, and put my wallet and cell phone in the basket. I took off both my shoes and began to remove my belt. It seemed so still with the few people around me that my mind began to slip into another place. I must have thought I was in the quiet solitude of my bedroom when I removed my belt and started to lower my pants.
Suddenly, when I realized my pants were coming down, that I was stripping for the airport security cameras and personnel, I jumped back into the real world. I turned fast to see that no one was looking and lifted my pants quickly, buttoning everything back up. I pretended all was fine and moved quickly to my left, then went thru the standing x-ray, hoping no one had seen me. My face must have been burnt orange, the color of em-bare-ass-ment.
I began to think how many times I’ve been embarrassed, caught like a drowning fish out of water. I remember paddling with my daughter, Marlee, on a boat in the calm river waters of Stratford, Ontario, I came back to the concrete dock to get off the boat. I pulled up to the side of the dock and the young teenager who was working there gave his arm to pull me out. I lifted my body onto the dock and held onto his arm but either he let go or I did. I fell straight into the water as he looked down with a blank look on his face. I tried again to pull my hands onto the concrete dock and lift myself up but my clothes were soaked and the weight made it tough to pull. The boy looked at me as Judy and Ilana laughed heartily. This was one of those moments that could have won America’s Funniest Videos if we had only brought a camcorder.
I walked into town, soaking wet, looking for a shoe store, to buy a dry pair of shoes and socks. I had to take off wet Rockports before entering, I soaked the chair I sat on and bought the first shoes and socks I found. The rest of the clothes took hours to get drier, until I finally got to the hotel room, cold and wet but with dry socks and shoes. My daughters and wife still laugh today when they think about me, the balding, overweight middle-aged man falling into the river with all his clothes on. If they had their cell phones, they would have snapped pictures and video and played it on You Tube for the rest of the world to join in laughter. They could have played it over and over in slow motion and backwards for everyone to enjoy my embarrassment.
We can’t forget the embarrassments of our youth. I remember a good friend who locked himself in the schoolroom closet because his hair had been cut too short and another who had to wear a big dunce cap and a letter D around his neck in the corner of the third grade room. Locked in a corner of my mind is the vision of my second grade Hebrew teacher suddenly sprayed by a water gun and my third grade teacher locked into a closet by a student. I will never forget the embarrassment I felt when I brought my arms down hard and accidentally smacked a fifth grade classmate’s mouth into his desk, shattering his front tooth. And I can’t forget the embarrassment I felt when Judy prodded me to say hello to him in a Chinese restaurant 39 years later. “Remember me,” I said regretfully, “the guy who broke your tooth?” He couldn’t forget but told me that all was forgiven. So after almost 40 years, my embarrassment had finally been relieved.
Some embarrassments are not self-inflicted. When I walked out of a bathroom in a Subway restaurant, my family was laughing vociferously. When I asked them what’s so funny, they said, that Kyle, only a few years old at the time, had been asked where his dad was and loudly belted out for everyone in line and sitting at the tables to hear, “My dad is making a BM!”
I sometimes believe that my legacy, in the words of my children, will be “dad’s fart stories,” stories that they just love to tell. Marlee loves to tell the story of the time her friend was over our house watching TV on the couch. I was napping and didn’t know that anyone else was in the house when I let go a seismic gaseous explosion and my daughter’s little Russian friend cried out, “Mr. Goldman!” and my daughter, more embarrassed than me, said, “Dad, Sophia’s here.”
Today, this story is a source of great delight for her and I just hope she doesn’t tell it too often, although there’s something freeing about putting these embarrassments in print. As they say in politics, it’s better to admit your foibles rather than let others find out first. I don’t know if that would have helped Governor Spitzer of New York but it might have helped Bill Clinton avoid his famous line, “I did not have sex with that woman.”
I guess I’m still waiting for Barack Obama to admit that besides smoking, he likes to let out a fart once in a while. Then, I can tell my children that even great men need to sometimes relieve a little gas. And then they can turn to me and ask if I’m really comparing myself to the 44th President and fall down, holding their bellies in hilarity.
Home ownership is not what it’s cracked up to be. Values have gone down while property taxes have risen. Adjustable rate mortgages ballooned, forcing those who couldn’t afford the payments, out of their homes.
The rest of us paying our monthly mortgages face different headaches.
Exhibit 1: Imagine waking up on a beautiful Thanksgiving morning at 6:30 in the morning, the sun shining, prepared for another Detroit Lion loss, and a turkey dinner after the game with your son home from Chicago, daughter home from college, and the parents and in-laws coming over. You walk downstairs, thankful for a day off work, as a whiff of something pungent hits your nostrils.
Like a scene in a horror movie in which the protagonist slowly walks into a room to discover blood and bodies strewn everywhere, you look down to find brown piles of dog poop scattered throughout the family room carpet. Some are large, some are just a few dabs of brown mixed with blood, a few are wedged against the wall, and many are in a trail in the middle of the room. You scream inside like the face in the Edvard Munch painting and run upstairs to wake your wife. “Honey, the dogs destroyed the family room. By the way, happy thanksgiving!”
Your wife, wanting to wake early to start heating up her brisket, turkey, stuffing, green beans, potatoes, matzo ball soup, kishka, mixed vegetables, and other delicacies for Thanksgiving, is not very delighted to be woken up with such a shrill message of thanks. “Can’t you clean it up?” she responds. “Do you always need to call me when there’s an emergency?”
If you can imagine it so far, listen to the rest of the story.
Either Esther or Chauncey, our two small Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, helped blitzkrieg our homey family room. We used a two liter bottle of vinegar mixed with cold water and placed a strategic spritz in dozens of locations over the floor, covered by rags but this didn’t work so well. The smell was still nauseating and the spots stayed brown and both families were coming over to eat in a few hours. We called our normal carpet cleaning company but the message stated they only did emergency water extraction, not emergency carpet cleaning. Judy looked on the Internet to find someone right in our city who specialized in emergency carpet cleaning. I called and found out from a woman phone answerer that she had a man who could do it but it had to be cash and the price was steep: $200. It normally cost about $50 for the family room carpet cleaning but as they say, beggars can’t be choosy. I told her I couldn’t get to a bank but I was ready to write them a check for $200 in cash.
A few hours later, a big man came to clean the carpet. He was gruff as if we were ruining his holiday or if we were actually one of the Detroit Lions, expecting to lose another football game. As the huge hoses entered our house, ready to suck out the nasty brown messes, he tried to start up the power but nothing was happening. He stayed in his truck, doing something while we waited, and came back to our house in twenty minutes to say he needed to get a part. He took off with the heavy hoses in our house and came back in about 15 minutes. He still couldn’t start the contraption up and said he needed to go to the gas station to get more gas. He didn’t have enough to power up the long vacuum tubes to suck out a little dog crap. Judy and I looked at each other as if we were Cheryl and Larry David, thinking how this was becoming a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. We could only imagine Larry yelling something in frustration and fury and Cheryl saying, “Larry, we have to clean the carpets. I am not having my family come over and walk around in a pile of dog shit.”
After an hour and a half waiting, he finally got the machines going and spent the next half hour power-vacuuming the carpet. And before he left, the carpets were cleaned. Voila. We could have a Thanksgiving dinner without the look and smell of dogs gone wild. I wrote him a check for $200 and said goodbye.
The Lions lost, the dinner was delicious, and we were thankful to have our extended family alive and well to enjoy it.
Less than a month later, my bank statement came and when I got to the check for Cash, the $200 I wrote became $1200 that the man had cashed. I flew upstairs, “Judy, the man with the carpet tubes stole our money!” I felt more like Larry David by the minute.
I went online to the web banking site, made a copy of the check which clearly showed, “Two hundred dollars and 00/100 cents” on one line and $1200.00 on the top line, and the date it was cashed, signature, and address of the man who got the check. The carpet man had obviously written a number 1 in front of the 200. I went to the bank and the customer service woman told me the teller had screwed up and violated procedures but that I would have to go to the police to file an affidavit. I began to wonder if Larry David’s brother might have been named, “Affa.”
My wife and I went to the Farmington Hills police department the next day and they said that changing a check was a felony that could bring 15 years in jail. The policeman said that certainly, if convicted, the man wouldn’t serve anywhere near that time. Judy asked why. Doesn’t anyone serve the time they’re supposed to?
While waiting for justice, we found a puddle under our kitchen sink and assumed that the instant hot water faucet, which was slow to start, was the culprit. We called a plumber but he couldn’t come till after the Christmas weekend when his supplier opened up. We could only guess the price of the job until he came.
That night, I opened a Chanukah gift I received and brought my new Bose iPod speakers downstairs to the basement to try out. While I sat on the chair, I noticed a small puddle under the chair’s legs. Strange, I thought, I looked to see if I spilled anything but I saw nothing. I got some paper toweling to mop up the mess but when I brought it down, the puddle became a large puddle, spreading to the table and behind. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. After three full rolls of paper toweling, I went upstairs, panicked. “Honey, we have a major problem! Help!”
Judy came downstairs and asked if the location of the sump pump had water to the top. The lighting was bad but when I used the flashlight, I saw that the water was to the top and the sump pump wasn’t working. The basement flood was starting to spread.
The crazy Detroit December weather, featuring huge piles of snow and ice over a few weeks, followed by warm weather reaching the 60s and high winds had made a mess of our home as well as so many others. On this Friday night after Christmas, Judy called our normal carpet cleaner because of their water extraction business. The guys said they were all working in the emergency of many floods. She spoke with the head flood man who listened in the middle of two feet of water in another basement but she was able to convince him to find us a plumber who could bring us a new sump pump to reduce the water.
The flood man couldn’t get anyone to extract water till morning but he was able to find us someone to get a pump to lower the water we already had. The water was rising quickly as Judy and I wore our boots to get as much of our stuff off the floor as possible. We knew we only had a few hours before there would be thousands of dollars of damage. We worked quickly, frustrated by the chaos, and then all we could do was wait for a plumber while the water rose.
The plumber came almost an hour after midnight and was able to put in a new pump. We were just hoping that the power wouldn’t go out like it had in thousands of houses in the metro area. We got a few hours sleep, only to find out that Judy’s family had lost power the next morning. They said it might be days before their neighborhood transformer could be restored.
The water had retreated but we had to get the water extractors to come and analyze the contents. Dave the extractor came and said that the carpeting and dry wall could be saved if he acted fast. He had two other men bring six large blue flood dryers and two huge silver heap filters to sanitize the air. They had to leave it all for 3-5 days and they had to move everything we had downstairs in our two rooms off the floors and away from the walls to allow everything to dry. We went downstairs to find paper toweling and couldn’t. Nothing was where it had been. We were lost in the chaos of all of our stuff moved everywhere in completely random fashion.
Meanwhile, Judy’s mom and dad, sister, and brother, packed up bags of clothes, food, toiletries, and other assorted items and came to live with us. While three men rearranged our basement and set up all the wiring for all of the drying and cleaning apparatus, we had four more people besides our own family of four to take care of. It was like the Brady Bunch supersized.
On the second day, the plumber came to fix the instant hot faucet. He had to pick up the instant hot faucet from his wholesaler and came back to install it. When I arrived to check on him, his huge body was sprawled out on the floor, his uniformed shirt up higher than his navel and his butt cheeks in clear view of everyone. When I asked where Judy and her family was, no one was in sight. They had clearly been traumatized by the view of a plumber with his pants pulled almost off his bottom and his asshole visible to all.
In last year’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” 6th Season, the Davids welcomed a black family who had lost their home to stay with them while Larry and Cheryl went through marital problems. In an early episode, Cheryl walked out on Larry, leaving him and the Blacks (the family’s real name) to try to live together. As the season wore on, Larry tried different schemes to get Cheryl to forgive him and give him another chance.
In our “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode, which we envisioned day by day as a 30 minute episode, one carpet cleaner comes from nowhere on Thanksgiving to hose us with an extra-long stay to salvage our carpets and leave us a $1000 fraud to clean up. The basement floods, the instant hot faucet explodes, a plumber changes our sump pump in the middle of the night, the water extractor people come to move everything around in our basement, Judy’s family arrives to live with us for three days, the instant hot water plumber comes to give everyone a striptease as he writhes on the ground with the pipes, and we are left to go to the police to try to put a carpet scammer in jail.
Me (Larry David Goldman): “Cheryl, do you want to keep the old instant hot faucet?”
Judy (Cheryl David Goldman): Larry, why do we need to keep that?”
Me: “I thought it might be useful if we need another one.”
Judy: “Can you just tell your plumber friend to leave already? I need to cook and I can’t cook with his big behind looking up at me.”
Don the Plumber: “Sorry, Mrs. David Goldman, where do you want these candles with the stars on them to go?”
Me: “Don’t worry about them. Here, I’ll give you a check for $525 if you leave already. We have salmon to broil tonight.”
Don the Plumber: “Salmon? I could use the fish oil. I have heart problems. Can I stay for dinner?”
Me: “Are you insane? You want to stay with this family? Come back with clothes that fit and we’ll think about it…. After thinking about it, the answer is no. Thanks for you help.”
Later in the episode, the police detective says, “You were really scammed. How does it feel to be taken to the cleaners by a carpet cleaner?”
Me: “Very funny, you should have been on Seinfeld.”
Paul the Policeman: “I always thought that I could have been a good guest star on that show.”
Me: “You, are you kidding? You can’t even put your basic crook in jail. Tell us when you catch him. We’ve got bigger problems dealing with my wife’s family, a basement that has to be reassembled, the insurance people, the sump pump grinding against the basement wall, a hot water faucet, and more sleet and snow coming tonight.”
Paul the Policeman: “Hey, smart ass, how would you like to spend a night with me in jail? To make it more fun, I’ll pick up Don the Plumber and he can join you.”
Me: “Sorry, officer, do you want me to be respectful or to treat you the way you really should be treated, like an asshole?”
That night in jail, Don the Plumber has to go to the only toilet in the cell but it’s broken. He tells me he doesn’t have the tools in his pants and he can’t fix the toilet till he gets out of jail. I yell for Judy, Larry David, my mother-in-law, the insurance agent, anyone who can help get me out of jail and out of this meshugena mess. “Help Us, Larry David,” I scream. “I promise to not make fun of anyone, especially plumbers, policemen, carpet cleaners, or water extractors. I just want to go back to my normal boring life. I want no TV show. Larry, help me get my life back!”
And out of nowhere, Larry David appears as a carpet cleaner with a huge hose. “I only take checks for cash,” he reiterates. “How about $1200 to get you out of this nightmare?”
Home ownership is not what it’s cracked up to be. Values have gone down while property taxes have risen. Adjustable rate mortgages ballooned, forcing those who couldn’t afford the payments, out of their homes.
The rest of us paying our monthly mortgages face different headaches.
Exhibit 1: Imagine waking up on a beautiful Thanksgiving morning at 6:30 in the morning, the sun shining, prepared for another Detroit Lion loss, and a turkey dinner after the game with your son home from Chicago, daughter home from college, and the parents and in-laws coming over. You walk downstairs, thankful for a day off work, as a whiff of something pungent hits your nostrils.
Like a scene in a horror movie in which the protagonist slowly walks into a room to discover blood and bodies strewn everywhere, you look down to find brown piles of dog poop scattered throughout the family room carpet. Some are large, some are just a few dabs of brown mixed with blood, a few are wedged against the wall, and many are in a trail in the middle of the room. You scream inside like the face in the Edvard Munch painting and run upstairs to wake your wife. “Honey, the dogs destroyed the family room. By the way, happy thanksgiving!”
Your wife, wanting to wake early to start heating up her brisket, turkey, stuffing, green beans, potatoes, matzo ball soup, kishka, mixed vegetables, and other delicacies for Thanksgiving, is not very delighted to be woken up with such a shrill message of thanks. “Can’t you clean it up?” she responds. “Do you always need to call me when there’s an emergency?”
If you can imagine it so far, listen to the rest of the story.
Either Esther or Chauncey, our two small Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, helped blitzkrieg our homey family room. We used a two liter bottle of vinegar mixed with cold water and placed a strategic spritz in dozens of locations over the floor, covered by rags but this didn’t work so well. The smell was still nauseating and the spots stayed brown and both families were coming over to eat in a few hours. We called our normal carpet cleaning company but the message stated they only did emergency water extraction, not emergency carpet cleaning. Judy looked on the Internet to find someone right in our city who specialized in emergency carpet cleaning. I called and found out from a woman phone answerer that she had a man who could do it but it had to be cash and the price was steep: $200. It normally cost about $50 for the family room carpet cleaning but as they say, beggars can’t be choosy. I told her I couldn’t get to a bank but I was ready to write them a check for $200 in cash.
A few hours later, a big man came to clean the carpet. He was gruff as if we were ruining his holiday or if we were actually one of the Detroit Lions, expecting to lose another football game. As the huge hoses entered our house, ready to suck out the nasty brown messes, he tried to start up the power but nothing was happening. He stayed in his truck, doing something while we waited, and came back to our house in twenty minutes to say he needed to get a part. He took off with the heavy hoses in our house and came back in about 15 minutes. He still couldn’t start the contraption up and said he needed to go to the gas station to get more gas. He didn’t have enough to power up the long vacuum tubes to suck out a little dog crap. Judy and I looked at each other as if we were Cheryl and Larry David, thinking how this was becoming a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. We could only imagine Larry yelling something in frustration and fury and Cheryl saying, “Larry, we have to clean the carpets. I am not having my family come over and walk around in a pile of dog shit.”
After an hour and a half waiting, he finally got the machines going and spent the next half hour power-vacuuming the carpet. And before he left, the carpets were cleaned. Voila. We could have a Thanksgiving dinner without the look and smell of dogs gone wild. I wrote him a check for $200 and said goodbye.
The Lions lost, the dinner was delicious, and we were thankful to have our extended family alive and well to enjoy it.
Less than a month later, my bank statement came and when I got to the check for Cash, the $200 I wrote became $1200 that the man had cashed. I flew upstairs, “Judy, the man with the carpet tubes stole our money!” I felt more like Larry David by the minute.
I went online to the web banking site, made a copy of the check which clearly showed, “Two hundred dollars and 00/100 cents” on one line and $1200.00 on the top line, and the date it was cashed, signature, and address of the man who got the check. The carpet man had obviously written a number 1 in front of the 200. I went to the bank and the customer service woman told me the teller had screwed up and violated procedures but that I would have to go to the police to file an affidavit. I began to wonder if Larry David’s brother might have been named, “Affa.”
My wife and I went to the Farmington Hills police department the next day and they said that changing a check was a felony that could bring 15 years in jail. The policeman said that certainly, if convicted, the man wouldn’t serve anywhere near that time. Judy asked why. Doesn’t anyone serve the time they’re supposed to?
While waiting for justice, we found a puddle under our kitchen sink and assumed that the instant hot water faucet, which was slow to start, was the culprit. We called a plumber but he couldn’t come till after the Christmas weekend when his supplier opened up. We could only guess the price of the job until he came.
That night, I opened a Chanukah gift I received and brought my new Bose iPod speakers downstairs to the basement to try out. While I sat on the chair, I noticed a small puddle under the chair’s legs. Strange, I thought, I looked to see if I spilled anything but I saw nothing. I got some paper toweling to mop up the mess but when I brought it down, the puddle became a large puddle, spreading to the table and behind. I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. After three full rolls of paper toweling, I went upstairs, panicked. “Honey, we have a major problem! Help!”
Judy came downstairs and asked if the location of the sump pump had water to the top. The lighting was bad but when I used the flashlight, I saw that the water was to the top and the sump pump wasn’t working. The basement flood was starting to spread.
The crazy Detroit December weather, featuring huge piles of snow and ice over a few weeks, followed by warm weather reaching the 60s and high winds had made a mess of our home as well as so many others. On this Friday night after Christmas, Judy called our normal carpet cleaner because of their water extraction business. The guys said they were all working in the emergency of many floods. She spoke with the head flood man who listened in the middle of two feet of water in another basement but she was able to convince him to find us a plumber who could bring us a new sump pump to reduce the water.
The flood man couldn’t get anyone to extract water till morning but he was able to find us someone to get a pump to lower the water we already had. The water was rising quickly as Judy and I wore our boots to get as much of our stuff off the floor as possible. We knew we only had a few hours before there would be thousands of dollars of damage. We worked quickly, frustrated by the chaos, and then all we could do was wait for a plumber while the water rose.
The plumber came almost an hour after midnight and was able to put in a new pump. We were just hoping that the power wouldn’t go out like it had in thousands of houses in the metro area. We got a few hours sleep, only to find out that Judy’s family had lost power the next morning. They said it might be days before their neighborhood transformer could be restored.
The water had retreated but we had to get the water extractors to come and analyze the contents. Dave the extractor came and said that the carpeting and dry wall could be saved if he acted fast. He had two other men bring six large blue flood dryers and two huge silver heap filters to sanitize the air. They had to leave it all for 3-5 days and they had to move everything we had downstairs in our two rooms off the floors and away from the walls to allow everything to dry. We went downstairs to find paper toweling and couldn’t. Nothing was where it had been. We were lost in the chaos of all of our stuff moved everywhere in completely random fashion.
Meanwhile, Judy’s mom and dad, sister, and brother, packed up bags of clothes, food, toiletries, and other assorted items and came to live with us. While three men rearranged our basement and set up all the wiring for all of the drying and cleaning apparatus, we had four more people besides our own family of four to take care of. It was like the Brady Bunch supersized.
On the second day, the plumber came to fix the instant hot faucet. He had to pick up the instant hot faucet from his wholesaler and came back to install it. When I arrived to check on him, his huge body was sprawled out on the floor, his uniformed shirt up higher than his navel and his butt cheeks in clear view of everyone. When I asked where Judy and her family was, no one was in sight. They had clearly been traumatized by the view of a plumber with his pants pulled almost off his bottom and his asshole visible to all.
In last year’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” 6th Season, the Davids welcomed a black family who had lost their home to stay with them while Larry and Cheryl went through marital problems. In an early episode, Cheryl walked out on Larry, leaving him and the Blacks (the family’s real name) to try to live together. As the season wore on, Larry tried different schemes to get Cheryl to forgive him and give him another chance.
In our “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode, which we envisioned day by day as a 30 minute episode, one carpet cleaner comes from nowhere on Thanksgiving to hose us with an extra-long stay to salvage our carpets and leave us a $1000 fraud to clean up. The basement floods, the instant hot faucet explodes, a plumber changes our sump pump in the middle of the night, the water extractor people come to move everything around in our basement, Judy’s family arrives to live with us for three days, the instant hot water plumber comes to give everyone a striptease as he writhes on the ground with the pipes, and we are left to go to the police to try to put a carpet scammer in jail.
Me (Larry David Goldman): “Cheryl, do you want to keep the old instant hot faucet?”
Judy (Cheryl David Goldman): Larry, why do we need to keep that?”
Me: “I thought it might be useful if we need another one.”
Judy: “Can you just tell your plumber friend to leave already? I need to cook and I can’t cook with his big behind looking up at me.”
Don the Plumber: “Sorry, Mrs. David Goldman, where do you want these candles with the stars on them to go?”
Me: “Don’t worry about them. Here, I’ll give you a check for $525 if you leave already. We have salmon to broil tonight.”
Don the Plumber: “Salmon? I could use the fish oil. I have heart problems. Can I stay for dinner?”
Me: “Are you insane? You want to stay with this family? Come back with clothes that fit and we’ll think about it…. After thinking about it, the answer is no. Thanks for you help.”
Later in the episode, the police detective says, “You were really scammed. How does it feel to be taken to the cleaners by a carpet cleaner?”
Me: “Very funny, you should have been on Seinfeld.”
Paul the Policeman: “I always thought that I could have been a good guest star on that show.”
Me: “You, are you kidding? You can’t even put your basic crook in jail. Tell us when you catch him. We’ve got bigger problems dealing with my wife’s family, a basement that has to be reassembled, the insurance people, the sump pump grinding against the basement wall, a hot water faucet, and more sleet and snow coming tonight.”
Paul the Policeman: “Hey, smart ass, how would you like to spend a night with me in jail? To make it more fun, I’ll pick up Don the Plumber and he can join you.”
Me: “Sorry, officer, do you want me to be respectful or to treat you the way you really should be treated, like an asshole?”
That night in jail, Don the Plumber has to go to the only toilet in the cell but it’s broken. He tells me he doesn’t have the tools in his pants and he can’t fix the toilet till he gets out of jail. I yell for Judy, Larry David, my mother-in-law, the insurance agent, anyone who can help get me out of jail and out of this meshugena mess. “Help Us, Larry David,” I scream. “I promise to not make fun of anyone, especially plumbers, policemen, carpet cleaners, or water extractors. I just want to go back to my normal boring life. I want no TV show. Larry, help me get my life back!”
And out of nowhere, Larry David appears as a carpet cleaner with a huge hose. “I only take checks for cash,” he reiterates. “How about $1200 to get you out of this nightmare?”
The economic horror story of 2008 involves home foreclosures, ballooning health care costs, the difficulties of getting credit, and the deeply troubled Detroit auto industry. The Vardon family in Oak Park, Michigan is the poster child for all four of these calamities.
Four years ago, it was a different story. The Detroit Pistons had won the Basketball Championship, the “Big 3” were profitable, and home ownership was on the rise. And when, in the fall of 2004, 20 million television viewers watched the Vardon family step out of a limousine, many of us wept with joy and relief. Like the Vardons, we were stunned how “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” renovated their small Oak Park home to help these struggling deaf parents care for their blind, autistic son. Like so many other “Extreme Makeover” episodes, we were left with a feel-good Cinderella ending.
Four and a half years later, no one feels good. The Vardon house is extremely close to foreclosure and help is desperately needed. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my house now,” Judy Vardon signed through an interpreter. (“Oak Park family who received ‘Extreme Makeover’ faces foreclosure,” Michael P. McConnell, Journal Register News Service, Dec. 8, 2008,) “This house really belongs to Lance; this is his environment. He can’t speak out for himself and I hope we can save this house.”
Three years ago, in the height of the adjustable mortgage craze, the Vardons refinanced with an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). This wasn’t to get a better deal but to allow them to pay for Lance’s escalating medical bills. Judy said, “We didn’t have bad spending habits. My husband got laid off for a time (at the Chrysler Stamping Plant) and insurance wouldn’t cover Lance’s autism therapy and some other things like his vision and special dental work.” The debt for Lance’s therapy alone was $20,000 then.
In four years, the mortgage was sold three times and the interest rate went up each time and now is 11.9%. In four years, the house payments have gone from $1200 to $1600 to $2300 per month. Their property taxes went from $1874 to $2852 per year. Their medical insurance doesn’t cover treatment for autism. And the Vardons are terrified that Larry will lose his job as a metal finisher for Chrysler.
When the Vardons tried to refinance for a fixed loan, they didn’t qualify because of their credit scores. So this house, made just for the Vardons, which includes a computer that reads Braille, security strobe lights and cameras for Lance’s safety, a textured piano and toys, is close to being closed for good, or at least until someone else pays a ridiculously low price from the bank to take it over.
The irony is brutally painful. But Judy is realistic as she signs, “Millions of others are experiencing the same thing.” She is right. Just this year, 390 homes in the small town of Oak Park are in foreclosure. In Michigan’s wealthiest county, Oakland County, foreclosures have ballooned from 2117 in 2004 to 9400 in 2008, a 440% increase. And this is before the latest rounds of layoffs and firings from the Detroit automakers, banks, and so many other companies in Michigan and around the country.
The signs of trouble in this holiday season are everywhere but there is no reason to give up. The Vardons are a symbol of hope amidst the desperation. “We’re a close family who loves each other,” Judy said. “I feel that I was given this life to show others that you can face these challenges.”
The Detroit area community has rallied to help the Vardons in the face of its worst economic winter since the Great Depression. WKQI-FM (99.5) raised $5000 and Seth Cohen of Mortgage Access Centers LLC in Birmingham is working on getting the Vardons a lower fixed-rate. He confidently said, “They’re not going to go into foreclosure.” (“Extreme Supporters,” Gina Damron, Detroit Free Press, Dec. 11, 2008)
Donations to keep the Vardons in their home and to help with some of their medical costs have started to arrive from all over the Detroit community, following the WKQI story and the articles in the Free Press and the Oakland Press.
Judy Vardon put her hands out in sign language to say that, “Foreclosure could happen to anyone at anytime.” Yes it can, but I want to tell her: not this time and not her house. Not if we all pitch in to help in this time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year. Instead of saying to her and her family, “Move This Bus!” we can speak to her without words. We can donate to the Friends of the Vardon Family Fund at P.O. Box 721084, Berkley, MI 48071-0084.
We can tell her loud and clear with our checks and our hearts that we are here to “SAVE THIS HOUSE!”
The economic horror story of 2008 involves home foreclosures, ballooning health care costs, the difficulties of getting credit, and the deeply troubled Detroit auto industry. The Vardon family in Oak Park, Michigan is the poster child for all four of these calamities.
Four years ago, it was a different story. The Detroit Pistons had won the Basketball Championship, the “Big 3” was profitable, and home ownership was on the rise. And when, in the fall of 2004, 20 million television viewers watched the Vardon family step out of a limousine, many of us wept with joy and relief. Like the Vardons, we were stunned how “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” renovated their small Oak Park home to help these struggling deaf parents care for their blind, autistic son. Like so many other “Extreme Makeover” episodes, we were left with a feel-good Cinderella ending.
Four and a half years later, no one feels good. The Vardon house is extremely close to foreclosure and help is desperately needed. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my house now,” Judy Vardon signed through an interpreter. (“Oak Park family who received ‘Extreme Makeover’ faces foreclosure,” Michael P. McConnell, Journal Register News Service, Dec. 8, 2008,) “This house really belongs to Lance; this is his environment. He can’t speak out for himself and I hope we can save this house.”
Three years ago, in the height of the adjustable mortgage craze, the Vardons refinanced with an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). This wasn’t to get a better deal but to allow them to pay for Lance’s escalating medical bills. Judy said, “We didn’t have bad spending habits. My husband got laid off for a time (at the Chrysler Stamping Plant) and insurance wouldn’t cover Lance’s autism therapy and some other things like his vision and special dental work.” The debt for Lance’s therapy alone was $20,000 then.
In four years, the mortgage was sold three times and the interest rate went up each time and now is 11.9%. In four years, the house payments have gone from $1200 to $1600 to $2300 per month. Their property taxes went from $1874 to $2852 per year. Their medical insurance doesn’t cover treatment for autism. And the Vardons are terrified that Larry will lose his job as a metal finisher for Chrysler.
When the Vardons tried to refinance for a fixed loan, they didn’t qualify because of their credit scores. So this house, made just for the Vardons, which includes a computer that reads Braille, security strobe lights and cameras for Lance’s safety, a textured piano and toys, is close to being closed for good, or at least until someone else pays a ridiculously low price from the bank to take it over.
The irony is brutally painful. But Judy is realistic as she signs, “Millions of others are experiencing the same thing.” She is right. Just this year, 390 homes in the small town of Oak Park are in foreclosure. In Michigan’s wealthiest county, Oakland County, foreclosures have ballooned from 2117 in 2004 to 9400 in 2008, a 440% increase. And this is before the latest rounds of layoffs and firings from the Detroit automakers, banks, and so many other companies in Michigan and around the country.
The signs of trouble in this holiday season are everywhere but there is no reason to give up. The Vardons are a symbol of hope amidst the desperation. “We’re a close family who loves each other,” Judy said. “I feel that I was given this life to show others that you can face these challenges.”
The Detroit area community has rallied to help the Vardons in the face of its worst economic winter since the Great Depression. WKQI-FM (99.5) raised $5000 and Seth Cohen of Mortgage Access Centers LLC in Birmingham is working on getting the Vardons a lower fixed-rate. He confidently said, “They’re not going to go into foreclosure.” (“Extreme Supporters,” Ben Schmitt, Detroit Free Press, Dec. 11, 2008)
Donations to keep the Vardons in their home and to help with some of their medical costs have started to arrive from all over the Detroit community, following the WKQI story and the articles in the Free Press and the Oakland Press.
Judy Vardon put her hands out in sign language to say that, “Foreclosure could happen to anyone at anytime.” Yes it can, but I want to tell her: not this time and not her house. Not if we all pitch in to help in this time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year. Instead of saying to her and her family, “Move This Bus!” we can speak to her without words. We can donate to the Friends of the Vardon Family Fund at P.O. Box 721084, Berkley, MI 48071-0084.
We can tell her loud and clear with our checks and our hearts that we are here to “SAVE THIS HOUSE!”
The blanket draped around Cindy’s casket reads: “When someone you love becomes a Memory, the Memory becomes a Treasure.”
The lost treasure of the life of Cindy Zarcycki can finally be laid into the ground. After 22 years of mystery and mourning, Cindy’s parents and siblings can finally place their daughter and sister to rest.
It was only in the last few months that the mystery of Cindy was solved and that mourning could finally begin. “This whole summer was surreal,” childhood friend, Cindy Dombrowski, now 36, said at Schultz Funeral Home in Eastpointe, Michigan. “I woke up this morning and thought, ‘God, Cindy, it’s a Friday. This is supposed to be your bachelorette party or a night out together, not your funeral.” (“Now, family can say good-bye,” Amber Hunt, Detroit Free Press, November 29, 2008)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Cindy’s childhood pictures were posted around the funeral home: Cindy taking pictures with her siblings, her eating messily as a baby, and with her father, jumping in the waves at the beach.
This was what the rest of her life could have been: photos with her high school friends, her high school graduation, eating her wedding cake and a photo with her first child. But all of this was speculative imagination, just pure hope. All hopes for a young girl’s growth to adulthood ended when the father of her 13-year-old boy friend deceived Cindy and picked her up at the 9 Mile Dairy Queen, inviting her to his son’s made-up “surprise birthday party.”
The evidence is now conclusive that Arthur Ream, the father of her friend, raped Cindy, killed her, and buried her along with her cassette tape and purse in a shallow riverside grave on a small plot of Macomb Township land that friends of Ream used to own.
For 22 years, Cindy’s family and friends wondered where Cindy had gone. Was she alive somewhere, a refugee from the family? Was she kidnapped and held and kept away from everyone she loved? Or was she dead and buried somewhere unknown? The loss and the fears of the unknown were unbearable.
Cindy’s sister and best friend wear tattoos now as a way to say that they will never forget her. Her sister, Constance, has these words marked on her calf: “Allways Remembered.” She says, “That’s how Cindy always spelled it.” Her best friend, Cindy Dombrowski, also has a tattoo spelled on her arm. It reads, “Never Forgotten.”
No one can forget the shock of finding Cindy a few months ago, led by a convicted pedophile who claimed he wasn’t responsible but admitted the murder to a fellow inmate last year. For the past 6 ½ years, Eastpointe detectives had searched for clues, never giving up the belief that Cindy’s killer was nearby. Now, with strong circumstantial evidence, they were finally able to find the killer. They were able to convict Ream in July of first-degree murder and eventually, they were able to get him to lead them to the place that he buried her 22 years ago. When the remains were tested, the DNA confirmed that what was left in the ground was 13-year-old Cindy.
Cindy’s parents and siblings are sad but grateful on this Thanksgiving weekend for the persistence and dedication of deputies and detectives who never gave up the search for Cindy’s abductor. They are thankful that they can finally give their little girl a proper burial next to her grandmother.
Death seems so empty and pointless but maybe the family and friends can at least feel some closure and a little retribution. After years of freedom, Cindy’s killer is finally locked up for the rest of his life.
All of this can’t stop me from wondering why Arthur Ream’s son, the boy who Cindy wanted as her boyfriend, was killed in a car accident eight years after Cindy, on Independence Day, 1994. I can only hope the grief that Arthur Ream felt then and through the years was as devastating as the grief felt by Cindy’s family.
The mysteries of murder and unspeakable grief still linger today. The memories of Cindy seem so far away now but the sadness will never disappear. Yet, on this Thanksgiving weekend at the start of the 2008 Christmas season, Cindy is not in an unknown, imaginary place. Cindy’s friend, Cindy, said, “This is the first time she’s been home for the holidays. She’s actually home.”
There’s nothing warm and wonderful in this holiday season for the Zarzyckis. The ending is a little less tormenting but there’s a little solace that finally there is a burial ground, a sacred place to search for Cindy’s soul.
A 13-year-old girl will never grow up. Her memory is locked into the hearts of the few who remember her.
That is all that is left, the memories…allways memories of a treasured life that is gone but never forgotten.
The blanket draped around Cindy’s casket reads: “When someone you love becomes a Memory, the Memory becomes a Treasure.”
The lost treasure of the life of Cindy Zarcycki can finally be laid into the ground. After 22 years of mystery and mourning, Cindy’s parents and siblings can finally place their daughter and sister to rest.
It was only in the last few months that the mystery of Cindy was solved and that mourning could finally begin. “This whole summer was surreal,” childhood friend, Cindy Dombrowski, now 36, said at Schultz Funeral Home in Eastpointe, Michigan. “I woke up this morning and thought, ‘God, Cindy, it’s a Friday. This is supposed to be your bachelorette party or a night out together, not your funeral.” (“Now, family can say good-bye,” Amber Hunt, Detroit Free Press, November 29, 2008)
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Cindy’s childhood pictures were posted around the funeral home: Cindy taking pictures with her siblings, her eating messily as a baby, and with her father, jumping in the waves at the beach.
This was what the rest of her life could have been: photos with her high school friends, her high school graduation, eating her wedding cake and a photo with her first child. But all of this was speculative imagination, just pure hope. All hopes for a young girl’s growth to adulthood ended when the father of her 13-year-old boy friend deceived Cindy and picked her up at the 9 Mile Dairy Queen, inviting her to his son’s made-up “surprise birthday party.”
The evidence is now conclusive that Arthur Ream, the father of her friend, raped Cindy, killed her, and buried her along with her cassette tape and purse in a shallow riverside grave on a small plot of Macomb Township land that friends of Ream used to own.
For 22 years, Cindy’s family and friends wondered where Cindy had gone. Was she alive somewhere, a refugee from the family? Was she kidnapped and held and kept away from everyone she loved? Or was she dead and buried somewhere unknown?
The loss and the fears of the unknown were unbearable.
Cindy’s sister and best friend wear tattoos now as a way to say that they will never forget her. Her sister, Constance, has these words marked on her calf: “Allways Remembered.” She says, “That’s how Cindy always spelled it.” Her best friend, Cindy Dombrowski, also has a tattoo spelled on her arm. It reads, “Never Forgotten.”
No one can forget the shock of finding Cindy a few months ago, led by a convicted pedophile who claimed he wasn’t responsible but admitted the murder to a fellow inmate last year. For the past 6 ½ years, Eastpointe detectives had searched for clues, never giving up the belief that Cindy’s killer was nearby. Now, with strong circumstantial evidence, they were finally able to find the killer. They were able to convict Ream in July of first-degree murder and eventually, they were able to get him to lead them to the place that he buried her 22 years ago. When the remains were tested, the DNA confirmed that what was left in the ground was 13-year-old Cindy.
Cindy’s parents and siblings are sad but grateful on this Thanksgiving weekend for the persistence and dedication of deputies and detectives who never gave up the search for Cindy’s abductor. They are thankful that they can finally give their little girl a proper burial next to her grandmother.
Death seems so empty and pointless but maybe the family and friends can at least feel some closure and a little retribution. After years of freedom, Cindy’s killer is finally locked up for the rest of his life.
All of this can’t stop me from wondering why Arthur Ream’s son, the boy who Cindy wanted as her boyfriend, was killed in a car accident eight years after Cindy, on Independence Day, 1994. I can only hope the grief that Arthur Ream felt then and through the years was as devastating as the grief felt by Cindy’s family.
The mysteries of murder and unspeakable grief still linger today. The memories of Cindy seem so far away now but the sadness will never disappear. Yet, on this Thanksgiving weekend at the start of the 2008 Christmas season, Cindy is not in an unknown, imaginary place. Cindy’s friend, Cindy, said, “This is the first time she’s been home for the holidays. She’s actually home.”
There’s nothing warm and wonderful in this holiday season for the Zarzyckis. The ending is a little less tormenting but there’s a little solace that finally there is a burial ground, a sacred place to search for Cindy’s soul.
A 13-year-old girl will never grow up. Her memory is locked into the hearts of the few who remember her.
That is all that is left, the memories…allways memories of a treasured life that is gone but never forgotten.
Sometimes, it takes one little boy to wake us up from our selfishness.
The world’s collective fear and uncertainty over the economy was jolted by an 11-year-old boy with a puffy face. When asked what he thought were the best things in life, Brendan Foster said, “Just having one.”
Brendan Foster’s lifetime was short. When he was eight, he was diagnosed with leukemia. In early November, the doctors gave him two weeks to live. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying his life. “I had a great time,” he said a week before his death. “And until my time comes, I’m going to keep having a great time.”
Brendan’s last wish was for the bees. The 11-year-old, nicknamed the B-Man by his family, asked those who heard him to “sprinkle wildflower seeds to save the bees.” He had heard bees were in trouble.
When I watched the short segment on ABC News and CNN, I was inspired like others by the young boy’s generosity of spirit. Brendan, interviewed by a television station in Seattle, said that on the way home from a doctor’s appointment, he noticed “this big thing full of homeless people and then I thought, I should just get them something.”
“They’re probably starving, so give’em a chance, food and water.”
This simple wish inspired hundreds of others to help. A food drive was held in Los Angeles while Ohio school kids collected cans and people in Pensacola, Florida gathered goods. In Western Washington, Seattle TV station, KOMO, asked viewers to help the Stuff the Truck food drive in Brendan’s honor. Six and a half truck loads of groceries were donated and more than $60,000 in cash was raised to benefit Northwest Harvest and Food Lifeline.
Brendan’s mother, after her son died in her arms, said proudly, “He’s done more than most people dream of doing just by making a wish.”
When Brendan had been asked what made him sad, he said, “When someone gives up.” This young boy with leukemia wisely told Elisa Jaffe from KOMO news, “Follow your dreams. Don’t let anything stop you.”
In a time when so many of us fear for our livelihoods, Brendan Foster acknowledged that the best thing in life was just having a life. Forget your standard of living or your health. Just being alive is reward enough.
B-Man’s wish for the living has not gone unheard. A retired pilot asked his pilot and flight attendant friends to sprinkle wild flowers, from Bali to Brazil, on Brendan’s behalf.
Brendan’s grandmother, Pat, said that Brendan told her in his last days that he was visited three times by angels. “He tells us that when he’s an angel, he’s going to keep doing the good work.”
On this Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for those who offer such joyous giving. We can be thankful that we are alive and think of the B-Man somewhere high in the distance, “doing the good work” above us.
Then, we can try to make him proud.
“Brendan Foster: ‘I had a great time’,” Nov. 21, 2008, Elisa Jaffe, KOMO News, Seattle,
Washington
“Dying boy inspires goodwill in people near and far,” Nov. 10, 2008, KOMO Staff, KOMO News, Seattle, Washington
Economic fear surrounds this area like a toxic cloud but that shouldn’t stop us from looking for something hopeful amidst the panic.
Like so many in the Detroit region, I have felt paralyzed by worry, consumed by the Detroit auto companies’ desperate pleas to get government bailouts, their fervent desire for survival. We’ve had to listen to a flurry of national negativity towards Detroit and its automobile industry and just wait for something to bring us a sense of optimism.
I wandered around the Internet, searching for something, but I wouldn’t have believed that the death of a 2 ½ year old boy was what I was looking for.
Kerav Roitman was an ordinary child made extraordinary by circumstances. In his short life, he was hospitalized in five different locations from the Bronx to Boston for renal and lung disease. For almost six months, his parents made a three-hour drive to Children’s Hospital of Boston twice a week before and after Kerav’s kidney transplant from his mother, Sonia, in January of 2008. People in Boston brought meals to the hospital while constant daily prayers were said on Kerav’s behalf. There were prayers written on his behalf in 42 of 50 states.
Kerav’s father, Brian Roitman, said that “the community, literally in a month or two’s time, managed to cumulatively…learn the entire Bible in merit of our son’s recuperation.” Brian said that “Throughout everything, from the worst times to the best, he always had a smile.” (“Toddler’s struggle inspires special Sefer Torah,” Devon Lash, Stamford Advocate, November 8, 2008)
All the prayers and hot meals in the world couldn’t cure Kerav, who died on August 1 from complications of an infection. But nothing could stop Kerav from inspiring a community to commission what Brian Roitman called the “ultimate memorial” in Kerav’s honor: a Sefer Torah. The Roitmans’ synagogue, Young Israel of Stamford, commissioned the project at a cost of about $35,000 as a living memorial to Kerav’s struggle.
A courageous smile of a dying boy brought about the ultimate memorial: the dedication of a scribe for almost a year to the meticulous detail of copying 304,805 little letters with a feather quill onto calfskin parchment. Kerav’s smile was the little mitzvah that inspired a community to come together for one purpose. “We are completely overwhelmed,” Kerav’s father said. “A Torah transcends a particular synagogue, a particular community, to become something that will hopefully last for centuries.”
Imagine what goes into creating a Sefer Torah. Each of the 304,805 letters must be perfectly written. If the scribe makes a mistake, he uses a double-edged razor blade to peel off the top layer of the parchment and then uses sandpaper to smooth the area. After completion, three independent proofreaders read the scroll and then scan it into a computer.
Young Israel alerted the Stamford community of the undertaking in October amidst the stock market collapse. They plan to hold a pre-Chanukah Sefer Torah Day in December. And in the months leading up to the completion of the Torah, children in the Stamford area will learn songs about the Torah, create a Torah quilt and learn portions of the text in honor of Kerav.
Like 11-year-old Brendan Foster whose last wishes before his death from leukemia helped inspire thousands to help the homeless and 18-year-old Miles Levin whose eloquent words before he died inspired those who read them to cherish every moment of life, little Kerav Boitman was a gift to all who knew him or read about him. Eliezer Silverman, chairman of Young Israel’s Torah committee, said of Kerav, “He was only with us for 30 months…but he always had a smile. His smile just melted your heart away.”
Even in the midst of financial panic in Detroit, we can stop and think of the courage of the parents of a little boy suffering from illness, the community of prayers surrounding him, and the joy he inspired to dedicate a Sefer Torah in his memory. We can take comfort in the mitzvahs evolving from one little child.
When we light the candles for Chanukah, celebrating the long light of hope that keeps Jews eternally hopeful, we can imagine little Kerav and his eternal smile. We can dream of our ancestors from the Torah surrounding him, holding candles up to his face, encouraged by his indomitable spirit.
Here, on earth, in these dark times, we must grab hold of whatever source of courage and strength we can wrap our hands around.
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