{"id":472,"date":"2012-07-18T10:46:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T14:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=472"},"modified":"2012-07-18T11:53:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T15:53:08","slug":"to-tell-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/?p=472","title":{"rendered":"To Tell the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t much like being corrected. Who does? But in my family, it\u2019s a constant hazard. I spin stories, my scientifically minded husband and son bring me down to earth. They make claims about something historical, and I gather my authority.<\/p>\n

But on Shabbos?<\/p>\n

Prepare for a confession.<\/p>\n

The sanctuary was returned to order. The def, darboukas and even the cowbell were packed up. My guitars were safely stored in the wayback.<\/p>\n

We piled into our sea green (yes, it has the woody panels!) 1978 Country Squire station wagon and turned on the air conditioner. The \u201cwe\u201d included my gentle and soft-spoken husband, Ralf, our twenty-year-old accordion-playing son, Erik, and our I-can-sing-harmony-to-anything-you-throw-at-me lay cantor, Angela Hodges.<\/p>\n

The clacking of buckling seat belts subsided. The inevitable question arose.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow was the service?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the story,\u201d Ralf said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the music was right on,\u201d Angela said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good,\u201d Erik said.<\/p>\n

Wait for it…<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d Erik added, \u201cwhen you started talking about the Barchu<\/a> <\/em>and the unfathomable force that causes the sun to set I started thinking\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I interrupted. \u201cDon\u2019t start in on me. I already know what you\u2019re going to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat unfathomable force?\u201d Erik asked. \u201cGravitation?\u201d<\/p>\n

Angela laughed. Ralf chuckled. I despaired.<\/p>\n

Erik studies chemistry, which he claims is the use of the obscure in the pursuit of the irrelevant.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you are home from college,\u201d I said, \u201cI start worrying about what you are thinking at services. As soon I started speaking about\u00a0the Barchu<\/em>\u00a0I could hear you in my head. \u2018It\u2019s the rotation of the earth we\u2019re talking about, mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it is!\u201d Erik announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I do spiritual direction,\u201d I said calmly, \u201cthe persons I work with often denigrate themselves. Sometimes I ask them to tell me whose voice is telling them that they are crazy, or overemotional, or whatever. It is almost always the mother\u2019s voice they are hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erik began laughing.<\/p>\n

“But I,\u201d I added, \u201cI suffer because it is my son\u2019s voice in my head telling me I am nuts.\u201d I paused. \u201cYou have been doing this since you were about four.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Erik admitted. \u201cI was a shmuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeeesss\u2026 well no, actually,\u201d I said. \u201cYou just loved the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I loved the truth.\u201d Erik agreed. \u201cLater, I realized there was no such thing as the objective truth. Now I correct people for the heck of it. While we\u2019re on the subject, do you remember the question you asked before Ahavat Olam<\/a><\/em>? You asked us to think about what makes us who we are,\u201d Erik said. He paused.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you thought\u2026\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA featherless biped with flat nails.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone laughed. Including me.<\/p>\n

In case you don\u2019t know the story, it is said that Plato once offered up Socrates\u2019 definition of a man as a \u201cfeatherless biped\u201d to students of his academy.\u201d In response, the philosopher and all-around snark Diogenes of Sinope plucked all the feathers from a chicken and brought it to Plato, saying, \u201cBehold! I’ve brought you a man.\u201d Possibly missing the point, Plato revised his definition to \u201ca featherless biped with flat nails.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our car conversation moved on to new Spanish-speaking guests at the service. I forgot my Spanish (or rather remembered it), and mispronounced one of our visitor\u2019s names. The family origins were in Latin America, not the Iberian peninsula.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, folks\u201d I said. \u201cWhen I studied Spanish I learned the \u2018c\u2019 as a \u2018th\u2019 sound. In fact, over thirty years ago, Ralf was learning Spanish at the same time and he claimed he spoke Castilian Spanish even though he pronounced the \u2018c\u2019 like an \u2018s.\u2019 We had a big battle over who spoke Spanish the way they did in Spain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I got the inclination to correct people from somewhere,\u201d Erik said. \u201cHmm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone but me laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOy. Guilty as charged,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve been hoisted by own petard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ralf, who had quietly listened to everything going down, finally spoke up.<\/p>\n

\u201cActually,\u201d my gentle husband said, \u201cthat\u2019s hoist.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t much like being corrected. Who does? But in my family, it\u2019s a constant hazard. I spin stories, my scientifically minded husband and son bring me down to earth. They make claims about something historical, and I gather my authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118,117,120,119],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ahavat-olam","tag-barchu","tag-diogenes","tag-plato"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrenalinedrash.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}