Your Bar Mitzvah
I’d never been to a Bar Mitzvah before. Yours was the first. I’m not Jewish myself, and I grew up in an Ohio town, homogeneous as Parkay. Only through being your former nanny did I ever get invited to such an event.
I didn’t know anyone and sat at a table with your older relatives, my peers. I couldn’t eat anything, being sensitive to gluten. I made some disclaimers so as not to feel like that street person who wandered into Temple that morning and sang along with the cantor. Is that what that person is called? The cantor?
That night, the dj played songs I had never heard, but all you kids knew all the words and danced little line dances to them, even to the hip-hop songs, which struck me as quite incongruous and country-western. Later, though, I googled one song and found out that, not only does said dance feature in the music video, but the song’s catch phrase endorses this crass sex act. So there’s that.
But I liked when the dj played KISS, and you kids drifted off, and I ran out on the floor with your older relatives and played air-guitar and slid around on my knees while making my metal face and metal hands. Someone passed out glow necklaces and those little glow-sticks that kids put in their mouths to make their teeth light up.
Then in the ladies’ room, a cluster of preteens at the mirror collectively told me I was a good dancer, and they liked my shoes, and I told them I liked their sparkly eyeliner.
The little kids made a chain of glow necklaces and were dragging it around on the ground. Your grandmother had a glow-stick in her mouth. Her teeth lit up.
Originally Published: 300 Reviews, May 20, 2010