The Bachelor’s Soliloquey

I am a big fan of Hamlet’s soliloquy. When you think about it, life hardly ever averages out on the euphoric side. I don’t think human programming permits it to. So why do we bother going through with it? In his soliloquy, Hamlet does an excellent job hashing out our reluctance to kick the bucket (although I think he leaves out two biggies: inertia and curiosity).

But I’m not taking this into the realm of literary criticism or existentialism. What I meant to say is that the soliloquy is eloquent and thorough, and rarely done justice in a parody. But the one below manages. It’s even easy to elocute with proper inflection.  If I knew who it belonged to, I’d cadge the rights for the Shidduch Musical. Thanks to Relarela for sending it.

O wed, or not to wed;–that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in a man to suffer

The slings and sorrows of that blind young archer;

Or fly to arms against a host of troubles,

And at the altar end them. To woo–to wed–

No more; and by this step to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand hopes and fears

The single suffer–’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To woo–to wed;–

To wed–perchance repent!–ay, there’s the rub;

For in that wedded state, what woes may come

When we have launched upon that untried sea

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes celibacy of so long life;

For who would bear the quips and jeers of friends,

The husband’s pity, and the coquette’s scorn,

The vacant hearth, the solitary cell,

The unshared sorrow, and the void within,

When he himself might his redemption gain

With a fair damsel. Who would beauty shun

To toil and plod over a barren heath;

But that the dread of something yet beyond–

The undiscovered country, from whose bourne

No bachelor returns–puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of!

Thus forethought does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And numberless flirtations, long pursued,

With this regard, their currents turn awry

And lose the name of marriage.

My Contribution to the Community

I have a great idea for an invention. (Listen up all relevant parties; yes I mean you.)

It started when Good4 and I were sprawled on my bed with our heads stuck out the window, enjoying a spring breeze. A young wife was shoving her way up the block, pushing a double stroller in front of her. She was practically 45-degrees with the ground in her effort to keep the heavy thing moving. And this was on level ground.

“When I have a double stroller, remind me to stand straight when I push,” Good4 said. “It looks so awful.”

“Not as awful as her husband strolling along behind, hands in pockets,” I observed. “But you know, she’s doing that because it’s heavy.”

“Yeah I know, but still.”

“You’d be like Black Beauty in the bearing rein if you insisted on standing straight. And that was outlawed as cruelty to animals.”

“Still. It looks terrible.”

I recalled that conversation a few months later while pushing a friend’s single stroller up a steep Israeli hill. I tried standing straight, but the darn thing (not to mention the kid) was heavy. I gave in to physics.

While I was pushing (and sweating), I thought about uphill bicycling.

Bicycle commuters are not always enthused about the exercise opportunities of their transit medium. That’s why they invented these motors you can attach to your bike. The smaller ones just kick in on hills to make it easier to pedal up. You still have to pedal somewhat, but it’s a whole lot easier.

I think we need something like that for double strollers. A small motor you can kick on that will make it easier to move those things.

It would have to have the following criteria:

(1) It has to be removable. For chagim and for locations with eruvim.

(2) It has to be small enough that we don’t wind up with motor-vehicle classification issues. It has to be legal for sidewalks.

(3) It has to be strong enough that a small woman, laboring under the weight of a large sheitel, could push a double stroller uphills without compromising her posture.

Someone, please invent this before I have my first kid.

Courting Flea

For the Courtship Customs series...

I was reading a fascinating article in a 1998 National Geographic about the human ecosystem. That is: the ecosystem that thrives on the human surface.  It detailed our sometimes cozy relationship with bedbugs, head and body lice, follicle mites, scabies mites, dust mites, crab lice, fleas, as well as ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, various fungi from athlete’s foot to ringworm, and the fascinating botfly. It provided statistics such as that a square inch of exposed skin can host a hundred bacteria, while an armpit might have millions. I don’t recommend that you read it if you are susceptible to delusory parisitosis, which the article credits with causing both suicide and homicide.

There was, however, a paragraph about how, in the past, these creatures have represented intimacy to the point of being used in courtship:

European lovers of the 17^th century sometimes wrote seduction poems about a girlfriend’s fleas. John Donne once petulantly complained that a flea, having bitten both girl and boy alike, “swells with one blood made of two/And alas this is more than we would do.”  A few gallant French lovers actually plucked a flea from their lady love and kept it as a pet in a tiny gold cage around their neck, where it could feed daily on their own blood. In Siberia, according to one story, an explorer was disconcerted to find that young women visiting his hut tossed lice at him; it turned out to be their way of expressing amorous intentions.

Clearly, this would not be a successful dating strategy today; for one thing, the human flea itself has almost vanished from modern homes. […]

Thank goodness for that! And aren’t you glad you don’t live in Siberia?

Not Such Breaking News…

I just found out that Diana Wynne Jones died in March.

Baruch dayan ha’emes. She was a brilliant author.

The Original Shidduch Drama

Just thought it bore mentioning: The Importance of Being Earnest, which is currently playing on Broadway, was available at TKTS booths last week. We’re talking the original shidduch lampoon (excepting the English society aberrations).

If She Could, I Could – by Fauna

I haven’t really got time for a post, but I came across this item in Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, a slim novel in which matchmaking plays its part. (It’s a sequel to Cannery Row, for Steinbeck fans.)

Anyway, a character named Fauna is trying to sandbag the local most eligible bachelor with a girl Suzy, who just blew into town. And she has a truckload of advice for Suzy on how to make herself appealing.  She has enough advice, she claims, to write a book entitled If She Could, I Could.

So, in the spirit of advice being only worth passing along, I have transcribed the short volume for you. This being a family-friendly blog, I have expurgated anything bleep-worthy.

Rule 1:

They ain’t  no way in the world to get in trouble by keeping your mouth shut. You look back at every mess you ever got in and you’ll find your tongue started it.

Rule 2:

Next thing is opinions. You and me is always busting out with opinions. Heck, Suzy! We ain’t got no opinions! We just say stuff we heard or seen in the movies. That’s the second rule: lay off opinions because you ain’t really got any.

Rule 3:

There don’t hardly nobody listen, and it’s so easy! You don’t have to do nothing when you listen. If you do listen, it’s pretty interesting. If a guy says something that pricks up your interest, why, don’t hide it from him. Kind of try to wonder what he’s thinking instead of how you’re going to answer him back.

Rule 4:

Don’t pretend to be something you ain’t, and don’t make like you know something you don’t, or sooner or later you’ll fall on your [derrière]. And there’s one more part to this one, whatever it is: they ain’t nobody was ever insulted by a question… The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

Rule 5:

Nobody don’t give a particular about [you] one way or the other. It’s hard to get them thinking about you because they’re to busy thinking about themselves. There’s two, three, copper-bottom ways to get their attention: talk about them.

Rule 6:

If you see something nice or good or pretty, tell them. Don’t make it fake, though. Don’t never start a fight, and if one starts, let it get going good before you jump in. Best way in the whole world to defend yourself is to keep your dukes down.

Additional warning:

Now look, Suzy – tonight, just before you say something, say it first to yourself, and kind of dust it off. …Sometimes if you look at it you don’t say it. A whole lot that passes for talk is just running off at the mouth.

All of this goes a long way to polishing Suzy me. One  item Suzy discovers herself, on her date:

She then lifted her glass slowly, looked at it carefully, then sipped and held it a moment before she put it down. S-l-o-w-ness. It gave meaning to everything. It made everything royal. She remembered how all the unsure and worried people she knew jumped and picked and jittered. Just doing everything slowly, forcing herself, she found a new kind of security.

This little epiphany occurs after she manages to bite back a “Whattaya think I’m an invalid?!” when he opens the car door for her going in and out. I definitely identified with that one.

And Fauna’s final advice:

Just remember a lot of things:

first, you got to remember you’re Suzy and you ain’t nobody else but Suzy.

Then you got to remember that Suzy is a good thing – a real valuable thing – and there ain’t nothing like it in the world.

It don’t do no harm just to say that to yourself.

Totally Off Topic (Just Because)

Speaking of Wilde Wisdom, I found a few other quotes I feel like sharing just because why not.

Remember back in high school when people would whine that they shouldn’t have to read all this old stuff because it’s not applicable to them today? So untrue. Here’s another line from An Ideal Husband that clearly demonstrates that politics haven’t changed significantly in about 100 years.

Lady Basildon: I don’t know how the unfortunate men in the House stand these long debates.

Lord Goring: By never listening… You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens, one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

Now, have you ever heard of the Pearl Type? This is a type of young lady whose jewelry consists mostly of a string of pearls as a necklace and a pair of pearl studs (or short dangly) in her ears. Why pearls, one may wonder? Well, it turns out that pearl-wearers have had the same reputation for about a hundred years. Here’s this line from An Ideal Husband:

“…I am thoroughly sick of pearls. They make one look so plain, so good, and so intellectual.”

There ya go: the Pearl Type. Pretty, but in a very modest way; intelligent, but not flamboyantly; due to being oh-so-very good.

Clearly, Wilde has some insight into even the most aidel bais yaakov maidel.

Now, as for why he ought to be read in yeshivos: here is some advice provided by a couple of women discussing the ideal husband (but in A Woman of No Importance):

Mrs. Allonby: He should never run down other pretty women – that would show that he has no taste, or make one suspect that he has too much. No; he should be very nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him….If we ask him a question about anything he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing…

…he should always be ready to have a perfectly terrible scene whenever we want one and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice… he should be perfectly broken-hearted…[and] allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and … it becomes woman’s duty to forgive, [so] one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.

And finally, here’s one last one to remind you to give your mother a hug before you leave after Pesach:

“…and boys are careless often, and without thinking give pain, and we always fancy that when they come to a man’s estate and know us better they will repay us. But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with whom they are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from which we are barred, and interests that are not ours; and they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter, they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them…”

Good Advice

I was reading An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde, last week, and came across this line of unmatched wisdom: “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

If good advice were meant to be passed on, I imagine isru chag would contain a flurry of advice-exchanging from “older” singles who have had the secret of their singleness revealed to them by wise relatives over the holiday.

One of the nice things about strangers is that they don’t give you advice. They just adapt to your “quirks” and get on with business. This is why some very flawed people have become very successful. Friends will sometimes share their insights, but only after agonizing over whether it’s really a fatal flaw, and then rehearsing their lecture in the shower. Relatives, I am sorry to say, rarely take showers before starting in on you.

Now, my relatives behaved this Pesach so I have little advice to pass along. I am only scarred by a few backhanded compliments (my favorite: “You sound so reasonable online”). However, on an annual basis I get an earful. I have become quite good at taking it. I can now listen to advice for a full five minutes before my eyes cross, my ears turn red, and steam starts dribbling out my nose. At this annual rate of tolerance growth, I will be more than ready to handle the censoriousness of my teenagers when I have them.

It’s not like it’s usually such great advice, I must note. People grasp at the simplest solutions. If you tell them “Former Date didn’t like my boots,” automatic reaction is “You should wear nicer boots on a date.” Yep, that should do it. One shopping trip and they’ll all be falling at my feet – and proposing to my footgear. I mean, seriously. If he’s going to be a shoe critic he can find himself dates by standing outside the outlet store of his choice.

I take it because I tell myself that the advice itself is a compliment. They really care. They think I’m not completely hopeless. No… what I mean is like this:

If you think Someone is absolutely wonderful, you naturally assume that everyone else will see this Someone as wonderful too. When it becomes obvious that scores of dates do not realize how absolutely wonderful Someone is, you begin puzzling over why. Could it be that so very many dates are blind? Or is Someone somehow obscuring his/her wonderfulness? You can’t help the amount of unperceptive people that Someone goes out with, but you can help Someone make his/her wonderfulness more obvious to these not-quite-perfect date.

So, by advising me on my boots, these well-meaning folks are just affirming that, in fact, they think I’m wonderful. Except for my boots. Those could use help. But everything else about me is just wonderful.

After all, there’s no point in advising a hopeless case, is there? Which means—can you imagine—they think there’s hope!

But… Wait… why didn’t anyone give me advice so far this Pesach?

Have they given up?

Wanted: Literary Character

Wanted: Atticus Finch, to marry one single young lady. Please email bad4shidduchim[at]gmail if you have any idea where he can be found.

Not for me, actually. This one is for someone else. I’m just jealous I didn’t think of it first. I mean, who doesn’t want to marry the perfect man? The one who always knows exactly what to say and do? It’s almost unfair to create such a guy because it makes everyone else inadequate in comparison.

He’s definitely at the top of the literary heartthrob list, up there with Fitzwilliam Darcy. Who else should be up there? (Howl Jenkins?)