Rabbis, first kisses…and other stuff
This post is dedicated to Alisa Bowman.
Good Sunday morning! I know we don’t usually meet here on Sundays, but the thing is that I’ve never really recovered from the Sunday mornings that I was forced into uncomfortable clothes and shuffled off to Sunday School. Not a Sunday goes by now that I don’t wake up and think, Awesome, I don’t have to go to Sunday School today. And it’s been 21 years since they made me go.
Look at this picture (shift your eyes up). That’s me. I was 4. Do you see how happy I was? That’s because I didn’t start Sunday School until I was 5.
It’s not that I’m against religion or anything. I mean, I believe wholeheartedly in George Michael’s treatise – you really do gotta have faith.
But Sunday School was just wrong. Let me prove it to you by listing some of my favorite moments (and, frankly, the only ones I remember) from this horrid weekly two hours that I suffered from Kindergarten through my sophomore year in high school (that’s 11 years, ELEVEN):
- Carpooling. Because it was fun when I was little to ride in a car that wasn’t mine.
- The Sundays that focused on the holidays where we got to eat (Rosh Hashana = apples and honey; Purim = hamentashen; Passover = charoseth) because they fed us on those Sundays.
- The ride home when we stopped at the deli on Wydown (Protzels) and I got to get the world’s saltiest and biggest pickle or pickled tomatoes, rye bread with corn sitzel and blow-your-mind corned beef. I ate mine with ketchup. (Does anyone see a pattern here? Clearly, my brand of Judaism revolved around food.)
- A very cute boy in my class named Sean. (Really, we’re Facebook friends and he’s even hotter now. Yes, because he’s no longer 12).
- The ‘teenage years’ when I walked in the front door of the temple, straight through the building and out the back door to meet my badass classmate who hailed from Jersey (the sketchy part) in the parking lot where we smoked and did nothing else for two hours and then walked back through the building to get picked up by our parents.
My family wasn’t very religious. True to one of the greatest coined phrases ever, we’re ‘Jew-ish’.
Oddly enough, however, one of my best childhood friends turned into a rabbi. Okay – that was kind of funny phrasing. Like he turned into a turnip or something. This was the first boy I kissed (when I was all of 5)…our moms and older brothers were best friends – and so were we. And we spent a ginormous amount of time together including every holiday, every weekend, every everything.
Mad scientist, Iditarod musher, famous musician – that’s what I figured he’d be. But, I never pegged him for the rabbinical life. Still, now, I totally get it. I understand why the Jewish faith is so important to him, why he’s taken on this amazing vocation. It’s because he didn’t have to go to Sunday School.
Read all about my old flame, Rabbi Heifetz, in a fantastic interview on The Daily Norm. Seriously. I wish I’d had a guy like this at my Sunday School…who knows, if it had been so, I, myself, might have turned into a nun.
The Daily Norm
You know the big fiction fallout of ’09? The one where I decided that fiction just wasn’t for me? Well, it sent me on a mission to capture the non-fiction, blogging and writing that I truly adore. And one of the things that I gravitate towards are other people’s stories…
Why? Because as a writer, I’ve been trained – since birth – to look at other people and write their story in my head. Seriously, have you ever met a How to Write book that doesn’t tell you to go sit in a cafe and write character sketches of everyone that walks by the window?
Yeah, well, I do this with a vengeance. And the people around me either a) beg me to stop staring, b) think I need to get a hobby, or c) jump in to the speculative fantasy with me.
Honestly, though – and this is part of the reason that I’m not writing fiction – my own fabrications are just never enough. I actually want to know the truth about the ten 20-somethings sitting around the table at the Early Girl Eatery in Asheville, NC. I want to know how old they are, where they went to college, who’s sleeping with who, who has a broken heart.
I kid you not, I’ve had friends hold me back from walking up to the table. I seriously want to know about these people, and frankly, I’m not too shy to ask.
So, I’ve found an outlet. It’s a new blog that I’ve created, and it’s called The Daily Norm wherein I talk to all different kinds of people and ask them questions about what it really is like to be them – on a normal day. They’re people that fascinate me because of what they do and how they live – and my goal is that by learning about their lives a bit, we (you and I) will be educated, informed and inspired.
I’m kicking this puppy off with interviews from an Ironman, an environmental scientist (who is presenting his model on climate control to the UN momentarily), theatrical educators and the one and only Chris Brogan.
To find out a bit more about how this all got started, you can read What is The Daily Norm? (An about page that could easily be a post on this blog…)
And if you know anyone (yourself included) that you think would be a good interview, go to Interview Fodder.
Believe me, I know we all have busy lives, so The Daily Norm will publish one interview per week. On Thursday mornings. Because I’ve always thought Thursday was the coolest day. (and Monday is Monday, Tuesday’s just kind of blah, Hump Day would be too obvious and Friday is happy enough on its own).
I cherish every single one of you…and I’m delighted to invite you over to my new pad. Thanks y’all, for checking it out.
Filed under Blogging, News | Tags: blog, Blogging, Chris Brogan, interviews, Julie Roads, the daily norm, Writing | Comments (5)How do you know when you’ve gone far enough?
I recently interviewed a superhero woman named Jana Strain for a new url that I’m involved with called iWomenSports – a site set to be the premier destination for everything women’s sports (a feat that won’t be hard to accomplish since no one else has ever bothered to do this).
Jana is a Freediver. At its most basic, she swims extraordinary distances (like 174 feet) underwater holding her breath. Sometimes just under the surface in a pool, sometimes straight down in open water. Hers is a natural born talent – discovered, launched and skyrocketed out of this world in the last year. Jana’s latest dive in the Red Sea set a new Pan American Women’s Freediving Record.
I’m in awe of what she does. I mean, beyond my fear of deep water (which, I think, is basically my fear of flying in the reverse), she takes herself as close to death as she can every time she dives. In the pool, it’s ‘easier’; she can hold her breath until the last second and then pop up a foot or so to the surface. But when she dives down deep into the ocean, she is faced with other things. She has to take herself to a different edge, an edge that comes with darkness and with the intense pressure changes that come with depth diving. Most significant, though, is the fact that diving down requires her to precisely calculate her air stores – because she still has to swim all the way back to the surface.
Think about that. Think about the self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-preservation and insight that has to accompany that expedition. Do you know how much to give and how far to go – so that you can break records, change your life or transform the world while taking into account that you need to know and save exactly the amount of juice that will get you back home?
That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. What more could I possibly say…this concept is just awe-filled.
If you want to read my interview with Jana (she says some very cool things) and check out the new site, follow me right over here…
Filed under How To, Writing | Tags: freediving, interviews, jana strain, women's sports, Writing | Comment (1)
