CEREAL FOR BREAKFAST (Dating Past 40)

One of my favorite stops on the internet is the Kvetch Blog.

Why?

The lady is a very bright writer with a style similar to mine. We have other things in common. She is a single parent in her 40s as I was. She is getting into dating after 40, as I had. Many times I get inspired on visiting her site. This whole dating after 40 series was inspired by her.

I have tried to become her pen pal but have been rejected.

Why?

As I told my friend from 60 years ago (whom I wrote about in Lady Longsleeves below), American women just detest me. That’s why I had to move to Thailand if I ever, in my life, wanted to get laid again.

“But,” he said, “how could that be? You are so charming.”

I had to concede that point. Lord knows I’m charming. If nothing else, I’m charming. I’m kick-ass charming. I’m so fucking charming it scares me.

Wait.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. So I got rejected by this potential pen pal. I complimented her writing on the comments in her blog and she responded by correcting my English. That, my friend, is not a red flag. That is a red cannon ball between the eyes. (It also is very funny. Come on, you have to admit that’s funny.)

This lady is one of the most “in your face” Jews I’ve ever come across. That’s another red flag. This one is mostly for her.

Let’s see. She lives in a small town in mid-America. She’s a single parent past 40 looking for a man. Non-Jews need not apply.

How you say, “Rots O Ruck?”

But her stories of her dates are great.

Being that Jewish today is… something. (I once had a Jewish ladyfriend whom I will no doubt write about at another time.)

I was raised in San Francisco. In this middle school I attended (Portola) kids were segregated by intellect. I was in the ‘smart’ class. I only recently learned that almost half the kids in that class were Jews. That friend who visited me from 60 years ago, I only recently learned that he was a Jew. He told me who the other Jews in our class were. I had no idea. So that ‘in your face’ Jewish stuff seems strange to me.

Today I was catching up on her blog. She had a story titled Pudding For Breakfast that reminded me of this:

I was a manager of a little league team of 8-year-olds. I got involved with one of the mothers, a recent divorcee, a cute little blonde.

We had a sleepover at her house. (Okay, I am evil. It was wrong. The kids became criminals.) The kids had a great time as did the adults.

At breakfast the lady brought out a box of cereal and some milk.

Now get this, my kid is eight years old, he had never had cereal and milk before in his life! He just flipped over this new treat, this great breakfast.

“How come we can’t have this at our house?” he whined, the poor little mistreated bastard.

Great, I thought. I bought several kinds of dry cereals. That lasted a week or more and then we had to go back to bacon and eggs and hotcakes and sausage and waffles and the rest of that lousy crap.

I’m not telling this as a “Can you top this.” I did that and other stuff because I felt community pressure, rightly or wrongly. A single father with a half-Asian kid was more than a curiosity back in those days. Many of the neighborhood mothers felt challenged, I’m sure. Teachers, he told me, would ask him what he had for breakfast. My own relatives would check to see if he was getting enough to eat. So I was paranoid on the subject.

But getting back to my friend whom I discovered was a Jew after all these years, I couldn’t help taunting him with, “Is it true that Jewish foreplay is two hours of begging?”

I was surprised that he was offended by that.

“That’s ridiculous,” he told me, “it’s only twenty minutes of begging.”

I don’t know… that ‘in your face’ Jewish stuff lurks in my mind. I suppose the faith is a lot stronger in small towns in Middle America. Right? Right.

I can’t get the voice of Bart Simpson out of my mind. He is saying, “I’m a Jew, kiss my pew.”

I wonder what that means.

I wonder if I need help.