not to be trifled with

In the summer we were at the morasha junction and some weathered dude in a sleeveless Tshirt was offering us figs or prickly pears or some fruit and I admired his stamina out loud to my husband. These guys...and they are at every junction...walk through the traffic when the light's red offering their wares all day long. Its hot, sweaty, exhaust fume work. And you're lucky if you get one punter per red light. And its well known that in Israel their pitch is protected by the mafia. So you can't just start selling or even begging at a junction without the protexia of Israel's underworld. Otherwise they would come by and beat you up and steal your strawberries. So they probably have to sell 10 punnets to get money for 5. Anyway, on that day my husband boasted that he is exempt from the need for mafia protection and he could tout his berries at any junction he wanted. Oh yeah? I say. Hows that? I have connections he said. (Note that "connections" was said in a tone laced with mystery and intrigue.) I have connections. 15 kilometers of "I better not tell you", "You're better off not knowing", and "I can't tell you...for your own protection" later, and he finally admits that he might have gone to high school with someone who might have grown up to be in some outer ring of the mafia. This reminds me of the time after we got married and he had me going for 2 days about his shady past in the mossad.

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from the ganenet* (kindergarden teacher) to say that a kid had hit amit and he has a scratch near his eye. I said yes I know, this happened last week. She said I know it’s the same kid and he’s been punished. I said What, you mean this happened again? Yes, and I have to tell you because its near his eye but he’s perfectly fine. But last week it was also near his eye and you didn’t call. Yes well we didn’t really see what happened and he didn’t cry or anything.

Give me a break. This is Amit we are talking about. He’ll cry inconsolably for 10 minutes because you drained the (cold) water out of the bath. He’ll cry because some other kid who has come over to play has the audacity to pick up one of his sister’s toys. He’ll cry because Daddy not Mummy is showering off his midnight pee. He’ll cry because there is a lump in his hummus. And that’s all just in the last week. He’ll cry for anything. I find it highly unlikely that some kid hits him and he’d just suck it.

My husband is better at homeland security than I am. I put it down to a playground fight and move on. He starts to stalk the offender. I can’t publish here how he reacted when an unidentified neighbour dumped their bucket of cinema popcorn on my car for fear of prosecution. (Although let it be noted, nobody has dumped their popcorn on my car since!) So I wasn’t surprised when he called me this morning asking for names, dates, and places. I told him to go and unleash his fury on the ganenet because a) I don’t like her anyway and b) he will get the point across far better than me.

He called later with the following update: I told her not to let that kid get near Amit again. He’s not allowed to play with my son. Furthermore, if anything like this ever happens again I will teach Amit what my parents taught me. I will teach Amit to break a chair on that kids face.

And with my husband, you know he’s only half kidding. He's got connections.