By Mordechai Schmutter
One of the biggest factors that go into writing my humor columns, I’ve noticed, is hashgachah pratis. The fact that something disastrous happens to me just about every week is nothing short of amazing. Everything Hashem does, he does for a reason. Generally the reason is that I should write about it, because thinking of over 50 topics a year is not easy. I don’t have time to go out every week and make things happen to myself, so a lot of times there would be no article if the disasters wouldn’t come to me. I just wish that the disasters wouldn’t generally cost me more than I make from the articles.
The story I’m about to tell happened last year the week of Tishah B’Av, which was a Tuesday. I had no time for anything that week. I have not yet found a halachah that says whether you can write humor columns on Tishah B’Av, so for now I’ve been abstaining. That left Sunday, when my kids were home all day; Monday, when my kids came home from camp at 1 o’clock; and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which aren’t great for me because I write a newsletter for my kids’ camp. (The theme of the newsletter is: “There’s a lot that happens in camp that your kids don’t tell you. Here are some jokes instead.”)
It’s not easy to write a newsletter, as it turns out, because I have to write an entire week’s worth of news, including what happened on Friday, by Thursday night. Not to mention that it’s not the counselors’ main priority to provide me with material for a newsletter, so I have to chase them down.
Sure, some of the staff tries to help. For example, every week we have a feature called “Best of the Week in Learning and Middos,” and we list names for each bunk. I don’t know how anyone besides the Ribbono shel Olam knows who the best was in learning and middos, but the rebbeim give us names, which are more like “Best of the Week in Paying Attention and Being Quiet,” and we run them.
I also do other things around the camp, such as chaperoning overnight trips. This allows me to experience firsthand what I’m writing about while also not giving me time to write about it.
Actually, all I did at first was chaperone that one rafting trip. But it turns out that when you chaperone a trip, they put you on the list of “first people to call to chaperone trips” and I’m not really good at saying no, because when I start saying no to life experiences, the Ribbono shel Olam stops dropping articles in my lap.
So they called me about chaperoning their second overnight, which was to take place on Wednesday night, right after Tishah B’Av. It was going to be a lot of fun. We’d be sleeping on a floor again. Of a gym this time. So hardwood and echoes.
So this time it was easy to say no. I said, “If I come along Wednesday night and get back home Thursday evening, when on earth am I starting this newsletter? After I get back Thursday night after a night of no sleep?”
So they said, “Well, let’s say you don’t go, and you start writing the newsletter on Wednesday night. What are you going to write about? Monday erev Tishah B’Av, with the half-day and the low-key play about sinas chinam? The lack of camp on Tuesday? The whole week is this trip.”
They had a point.
So Wednesday morning was crazy. I had a lot to do before the trip. For one, I had to find out who was the Best of the Week in Learning and Middos, despite there not being a week. So the learning director hands me a list that I think is entirely based on Monday morning, and I notice that one of the bunks has no kid listed. So no one was the best? Someone has to be the best. At least the least bad. It was erev Tishah B’Av, for heaven’s sake.
So he said that the rebbi of that bunk, Rabbi Hersh, was absent that day. He’d tried reaching Rabbi Hersh, who wasn’t answering his cell phone for some reason. So I told the director that if I didn’t get a name by Thursday night, I was going to pick a name myself. Probably my son.
I also had to return books to the library, because books are due when they’re due, and the library doesn’t care if you’re going on an overnight. And I didn’t remember about the library books until Tishah B’Av, when I was trying to pass the afternoon by making a huge list of things to do Wednesday morning.
So I went home and started looking for my kids’ library books. These were not easy to find, and the kids were not home to ask, and they wouldn’t have known where their books were if I’d asked, because some of these books had been hidden four weeks earlier. I finally found the last book and sped off, only to find that every direct road between my house and the library was closed, all for unrelated construction reasons. It’s like all the crews were waiting until right after Tishah B’Av to start working on the roads, which was nice, but it wasn’t even chatzos yet. I knew this, because I had a half hour to get home and get my clothes in the laundry so I could have wet clothes to wear on the overnight.
I hadn’t taken my GPS in the car, because it’s a local library. And anyway, my general policy is that even if roads are closed, there are always detour signs.
There weren’t. I knew basically in what direction the library was, but I kept getting turned around in a maze of one-way streets and unrelated road closings and lots of lost cars backing out of what I think was a one-way dead end, and when I finally got out of that area, pretty sure that the library was vaguely somewhere ahead and to my right, the road swerved left, because apparently someone had decided to drop a train station right in middle of the street. So I went left, and I’m stopped in a line of cars that were waiting for nothing, and this did not look like the greatest of neighborhoods, and who do I see standing at the corner near the train station? Rabbi Hersh.
So I rolled down the window.
“Who’s the camper of the week?” I yelled.
“Oh!” he replied. “Can I have a ride?”
Turns out being a rebbi in a camp for eight weeks is not his main job. He works for an organization called Yedei Chesed, and he had some kind of training that morning. And the only way he could get to the training was by train. (Of course.) But apparently the training was very tiring, because afterwards he got on the train and fell asleep. No one who lives near train tracks falls asleep ever, but people on the actual train sleep all the time.
Anyway, he missed his stop, and he woke up at this strange train station in the middle of nowhere. He had no idea where he was, no idea how to get back, his wife wasn’t picking up her phone, he’s standing at the corner trying to get his bearings, and suddenly I drive by.
So yes, I gave him a ride. To the library.
My point is that Hashem made me forget to go to the library until the last minute, made me spend time looking for books, closed a weird series of roads, all so that I would stumble across this rebbi in a place where I’d never been before—and couldn’t revisit if I tried—just as he stumbled off the train half-asleep so I could pick him up. And I wouldn’t even have rolled down my window if I hadn’t had a smart-aleck comment to say about camper of the week.
But on the other hand, I didn’t know who the camper of the week was only because he wasn’t answering his phone because he was sleeping, which was the only reason he missed his stop in the first place. Do you need to lie down yet?
Don’t miss your stop.
Also, I got an article.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of four books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.