April 29, 2005

• It’s no news.  I’m bad at many things.  For one, I can’t canoe without putting at least three other lives in danger.  I also can’t listen to rap music without dying of a concussion, eat eggplant, or go through an entire day without humiliating myself.  I can’t make waffles, I can’t show up on time, I can’t not laugh at dead baby jokes.  I am physically incapable of saying things such as ‘lol’, ‘ttyl’, or suffocating already brief words such as ‘you’ into a sickly ‘u’.  I can’t lie without chewing on the insides of my cheeks.  I can’t help but laugh during awkward situations.  I can’t find my cell phone. I can’t use electric toothbrushes without spraying toothpaste and water all over the bathroom. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Oh.  And I can’t go a day without breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments.   

  
  

   

  
  

  Honestly.  If there really is a god, not only would he condemn me to hell, but he would probably tell all the rabbis across the world to hang a picture of my corpse wearing a shirt bearing the words ‘I Went to Hell For Sinning My Ass Off and All I Got Was This Stupid T-shirt….and a sentence to three million years of lifting massive boulders for no apparent reason while in the presence of Hitler’  just to scare everyone out of flicking chewed gum at their Sunday school teachers.

  
  

   

  
  

  Kidding, I’m actually not that horrible.  I do celebrate the holidays.  Not all of them, though.  Like, on Tu Bishvat I wouldn’t go out of my way to rip up the test Dr. Citrin might hand out, start screaming “TREE MURDERER!” and proceed to attacking him with a chainsaw.  However, I do attend Seder and recite the four questions.  I do sing the prayers on Chanukah.  I even take the time to meticulously watch the gripping and inspiring film “A Rugrats Passover” whenever I feel the need. 

  
  

   

  
  

  But out of the few things about my religion that I follow or at least take into consideration, the Ten Commandments are not one of them.  Which scares me.  Even as I write this, the words ‘ten commandments’ are underlined in that green squiggly line because it was not grammatically correct.  Apparently, the Ten Commandments are so important that they must be capitalized. See?  Even Microsoft Word is more religious than me.  When a machine has more wholesome values than you, then you know you must be dead inside.

  
  

   

  
  

  The ten commandments: proof that rules probably weren’t meant to be broken

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

  
  

   

  
  

  I wish I could get away with saying that I long believed in God before I found faith in anything else, but then I would be lying.  Actually, I did believe in God as a young child.  However, after I lived a few more years and experienced a few more horrors, I began to turn to science for answers.  Rain was no longer God’s tears of grief, but instead just another day in the life of the water cycle. The macaroni we had for dinner wasn’t awful because God decided to curse us, but because my mother possessed the ability to burn anything she laid her hands on.  The science phase lasted for awhile.  Up until about two weeks ago when I came to the distinct realization that science sucks. So now I believe in Snapple.  Undoubtedly the best stuff on earth. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 2: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

  
  

   

  
  

  Oh my god. That is totally not just my goddamn problem.  I swear to god, everyone does it.  It’s become so common that it’s usually abbreviated into a mere ‘omg’.  And who says omg? Anyone reading this can name at least ten people that do. It’s actually come to the point where you can see the words escape from someone’s mouth, as if they were sparkly pink smoke rings. Omg omg omg! A girl might exclaim after a brief encounter with her crush.   ‘OMFG’ if he says hi back.  Conspiracy against the second commandment? You’d think so.  But in all honesty, I think ‘omg’ is just another one of those unintentional valley girl words. One day, some popular school girl must have broken a nail and started crying hysterically.  After she realized people were teasing her, she probably shouted ‘Oh my god!’ in order to prove that it was no laughing matter, that she was in severe pain.  And then everyone pitied her and started saying ‘oh my god’ in order to mutate the pettiest issues into life-altering horrors.  Just like one must insert an incorrect usage of ‘like’ into every sentence he or she utters, ‘omg’ is sort of the caution to start that sentence off.  It’s supposed to warn the listener, subconsciously telling him or her that ‘Yeah, even if what I’m about to tell you is about as important as the fungus growing in between my toes, I want you to listen intently as if you actually care.”  It’s sad, really.  What would be a powerful stab at religious beliefs is now nothing more than this sound programmed into just about every teenager’s daily conversation.  Besides its cautionary use, ‘omg’ really has no meaning.  It just is.  And for that reason, we are all probably going to hell. Jesus Christ, it is going to be crowded down there.

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 3: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

  
  

   

  
  

  I’m not entirely sure what this means, but I’m pretty sure I’ve violated it.

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 4: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

  
  

   

  
  

  Truthfully, the last time I celebrated Shabbat was about two years ago.  My Bat Mitzvah was coming up and my family and I were getting really into the whole Hebrew thing.  Now, the holiest thing about my Friday nights would probably be the bread from the pizza my friends and I leave hanging around in the living room as we watch The Notebook for the seven-thousandth time. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 5: Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long.

  
  

   

  
  

  I am a teenager. 

  
  

   

  
  

  That should be self-explanatory.  Teenagers rarely get along with their parents. Why? Because we’re dealing with the whole “I hate you…but can you drive me to the movies?” type of relationship.  However, I do have it better than most.  I’m friends with my mom.  She’s sort of like my nerdy best friend.  When she looks fat in those pants, I tell her.  When I’m acting like a class-A bitch, she tells me.  When she starts singing to Rod Stewart, using a fork as her microphone while at the same time showing off her nonexistent dance skills, I let her.  Sometimes, I even join her. But that’s what friends are for, right?

  
  

   

  
  

   I’m nonetheless a horrible kid.  I never clean my room, I never pick up after myself. The most common response my mom might get out of me after she yells at me to set the table would be a “Yeah, m’kay…in a sec…” My role in this house is pretty much that of a lazy blob who wastes oxygen by spending her days instant messaging her friends and eating everyone else’s fruit gushers.

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 6: Thou shalt not kill.

  
  

   

  
  

  Before I confess anything, I just want you all to know that it was an accident.  I didn’t mean for it to happen.  And I really don’t want the police getting involved.  So just keep it on the down-low, alright? Thanks.

  
  

   

  
  

  It happened last year.  I was in camp, sleeping.  And then the three of them just started bombarding me and yelling in my ear.  They started circling around me.  And all I wanted was for them to just go away.  They didn’t though.  Even after all my cries of frustration, they continued to circle around me, taunting me.  So, I quite accidentally sprayed them with a deadly gas. Honestly, I don’t know how it happened. One minute they were yelling in my ear, the next they were one the floor, gasping for air.  And I swear I don’t remember how I crushed their mangled remains with my hiking boot.  It all happened so fast, really. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Seriously though, I wouldn’t intentionally hurt a fly…

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 7: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  
  

   

  
  

  In second grade, I married The Rugrats.  I dedicated my heart and soul into that show, memorizing practically every episode and quoting them constantly. Sometimes, I would even voluntarily lock myself in a playpen just for the thrill of trying to escape out of it. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Then, Deedee spawned Dill Pickles, and the show died.

  
  

   

  
  

  But the thing is, it didn’t physically die.  It just lost its initial spark.  The show actually continued on for a few more years, haunting Nickelodeon, telling everyone that "I'm not dead! I'm alive! Look! I have Kimi!"  But no matter how loud the Rugrats’s cries for understanding echoed through the channels, everyone was thoroughly convinced that the show was dead.  “C’mon, just because the grandpa’s voice magically changed overnight doesn’t mean you don't still love him!” the show would cry.  “What was that?” its former viewers would say, “Eh, probably just the wind…”

  
  

   

  
  

  Needless to say, I felt too guilty to file for divorce of my slightly dead companion.  Instead, I just stopped watching it altogether without any legal document to entirely sever our relationship. I pretty much left the show for dead. Trying to muffle my guilty conscience, I changed the channel to Boy Meets World.  And I never turned back.

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 8: Thou shalt not steal.

  
  

   

  
  

  I stole a bagel once.  I ate the evidence.

  
  

   

  
  

  Commandment # 9: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

  
  

   

  
  

  Luckily, I have not yet been arrested.  However, I did just ‘bear false witness’ to you.  See, I lied before.  About commandment number six.  I didn’t kill three flies.  I killed four.  And two mosquitoes.  It was all very coincidental.  The machete wasn’t mine, though. I swear.

  
  

  Commandment # 10: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.

  
  

  The first thing I thought after reading this commandment was something along the lines of “Hahahahaha. The holy man said ‘ass’!  He said ass! I’m going to covet someone’s ass! Hahahaha.”  After that, I didn’t think much.  In fact, all I did was realize that my existence was entirely pointless and proceeded to watch the rest of Family Guy. 

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  So there you have it.  The confessions of one of the worst Jews ever. Although, I did leave out a few of my faults.  For one, I never fast on Yom Kippur.  And being that today is the sixth day of Passover, I’ve already consumed enough yeast to start my own private bakery.  And during the Seder this year, I found the afikomen.  And that’s only because I cheated.

  
  

   

  
  

  But hell doesn’t look so bad. I mean, there’s heating...

  • 1:56 pm
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