The Misconception

I'm back. Totally wanting a shower and a nap and perhaps a way in which to regain a LOT of lost study time, but otherwise mostly groovy. To try and lift this site from the introspective mopey depths to which it seems to have sunk (don't worry J, I don't really mean that and appreciate anything you deign to post here) I'll grace you all with the story of how several members of the local synagogue came to the conclusion that I shake down short people for candy.

There's a communal meal at the synagogue every Sabbath. People pray, go to the meal, go back to praying and by the time the whole hullabaloo is over, so is the Sabbath and we're all free to go back to our electricity and pens. Because space is somewhat at a premium, a bunch of meal-goers have carved out zones for where they usually sit. I mark my territory in the following ultra-civilized way: I drop my keys on the table by my seat. Works like a charm. Everybody knows everybody at the place, there's no danger of someone walking off with them.

Right. Of course there is, you're thinking. And on this particular weekend, you'd be right.

One of my friends shot into the kitchen as I was helping prepare things and asked if I had removed my keys from the table. Following a short series of cardiac palpitations, I said no and then went out to the scene of the crime to verify for myself that they keys were missing. I did this by checking the entire table and floor, and then staring intently into the eyes of the 25-65 crowd I was sitting with to try and guilt whichever joker it was into giving up the goods. No dice. They were in fact, not to be found.

And then, I noticed one of the synagogue's cute little children helping hand out soda. About five years old. Adorable kid. And I thought to myself, hey, give it a shot.

"Zachary, did you see some keys on the table, here?"

Zachary looked up at me with his tremendous brown eyes, and with an even more tremendous smile, started nodding his head frantically up and down. Very proud of himself.

"Uh, Zachary, did you take the keys from the table?"

Smile. Nodding, nodding, nodding. He had probably recognized my keys from other games we had played in week past.

Cute, actually, but things get complicated right about... now.

I quickly bent down, picked him up and took him right outside the central room (that part's fine, we usually play together a little bit). Putting the little gremlin down, I looked down at him from about four feet up and waited for the keys.

"Zach, I need my keys to get into my house."

Looking up at me with pleading eyes, he disagreed politely but firmly. "Your father can open the door when you get there."

"No Zachary, I don't live with my father. I will not be able to go home. Give me the keys."

And so on and so forth until he was finally convinced that I lived on my own and wouldn't be able to enter my apartment without what he's got in his pocketses.

Sighing, he reached for the keys. Luckily for him, and ridiculously for me, he had just had a visit with the synagogue's candy woman who had loaded him up with about 15-20 lollipops, all of which were somehow crammed into his pockets. The upshot of this was that he was searching for my keys in what were basically cavernous pockets brimming with candy. And as I was standing over him glowering, he was slowly laying out lollipops on the floor in front of me, one at a time.

And everybody that walked by for the next 5 minutes saw a six foot tall 20-something forcing a kid to clean his pockets out of all of his sweets and give them to her.

Me. Shaking down a five-year-old. On the Sabbath no less. In the House of the Lord.

*Sigh*. I am the Anti-Tact.