obsessed with Southie

on my way to work today legitimately the most UNUSUAL thing happened to me.

not just like strange or slightly off, but
UNUSUAL
and i never use that word

(also please say unusual several times out loud real quick, isnt it a treat for your larynx and diaphragm. well i sure think so. it allows me to express virtually the entirety of my full bodied timbre in just one word. it just rolls around in there, lovely)

so about 45 minutes into my hour long sojourn to work, deep in the darkest depths of South Tel Aviv, this elderly woman starts motioning at me on the side walk. i respectfully took off my headphones and listened to her say a bunch of crazy shit in hebrew, something about my shirt and "ein li yad" which to me directly translates to "i am without hand". well she had two hands and i was like "you cant have my shirt". strange people approach me all the time in israel so i was kind of like, ok i knowt he drill, im going to leave now. but then she lifted her shawl up a little bit and what do you know shes in only a bra. we are talking about like a 65 year old woman with a cane thing wandering the streets of tel aviv in a bra at 9 o'clock in the morning. then i nocticed that there appeared to be a ripped shirt around her neck. so im like, alright i get whats going on here, this crazy woman that thinks she has no hands ripped her shirt and now she wants mine. i was all like back off lady, you cant have my ingrid michaelson shirt, my mom bought it for me, ya know.

as im trying to back away and leave she kind of grabbed me and then with her left arm grabbed her right to demonstrate that in fact she has a lame right arm. besides feeling like i could probably improve my hebrew quite substantially, this is around the time i realize im way too absorbed in whatever is going to happen next to care if this woman is really a gypsy and several small children are lurking close behind to steal my valuables (ie my israel phone, university of colorado student id bearing my high school senior picture, several receipts and my new bathing suit). over the next few minutes and several one armed hand motions i realize that its not a ripped shirt, she just cant get it on, and in fact is expecting me to dress her in the middle of the sidewalk. first off i have no idea how she got the level of dressedness that she was currently at, but i got to thinking, she very well might have left her house for the sole purpose of finding someone to dress her, and that made me sad. i really like old people, even ones with dry skin and hairy armpits like this one. so i unslung her purse (again how did she get that on, she must be like a wizard with one arm), set it on the ground, and set to work putting her spandex black and white polka-dotted shirt on. (in retrospect i should have known she didnt want my ingrid michaelson shirt, different styles you know). i had to curl her right arm up into a little ball so i could try to just shoot it out the end of the sleeve, i think it worked pretty well and thank goodness for the spandex. once we got that bad boy through, we were able to a bit more gracefully slid her other arm in. the i pulled the shirt down around the bod, and after the shirt was officially on and covering both her arms and mid section i resettled her shawl and whipped the purse back on. she thanked me, i think, or said something, i dont know, snatched up her walking platform stick thing with the good hand and scuttled off.

most UNUSUAL five minutes of my life.








also read Haaretz.com today, scroll down to the bottom of the page, see the opinion section. yes thats right i did that. no, no, dont be silly i didnt write any of the articles, but i did pick, caption and crop that picture, as well as write the 3 lines explaining the story. dont be too impressed!

Anne