Archives for February 2006

Like other writers of blogs, I tend to pay attention to what searches people do that lead them to my page. Usually, I can figure out what they meant and how they got there. However, as on a few other occasions, today I am stumped.

Someone got to me with a search of “she called the chickens.” Aside from the fact that I don’t remember ever having talked about chickens in my blog, I am puzzled by what this person wanted to know. The first thought that comes to mind is that the person who was searching wanted to know WHAT she called the chickens. Did she call them Henny Penny and Chicken Little? It made me wonder what I would call a chicken if I had one. Perhaps “Dinner?”

Or was the person looking for a story about a farm with a motherly looking woman dressed in a checked apron, her hair in a neat bun at the nape of her neck, opening up the creaky screen door to call the chickens? What were they doing that required her calling them? I wonder if they were wandering out into the road.

Many years ago I used to drive my daughter to school each morning because her school was a good 40 minutes drive away and it was on my way to school when I was studying for my doctorate. There was a road that we used to drive on that more often than not had chickens walking by the side. Every once in a while, we would see feathers in the road and we would guess that not all of the chickens had successfully negotiated the traffic. But each morning, we enjoyed seeing the chickens and affectionately called the road, “Chicken Road.” Sadly, one day the chickens were gone and never returned, and from then on, we drove on “the road formerly known as Chicken Road.”

But could she have been calling the chickens for some other reason? Perhaps she wanted to paint a chicken painting and wanted them to come together to pose. Perhaps she missed their peeping. Perhaps she realized that the rain or snow was coming and she wanted them to be warm and dry.

We’ll never know. If the searcher finds out, perhaps he/she will tell us.

Yesterday I went shopping. Now some women are natural shoppers because they are endowed with the shopping gene. But there are some women who have perfected shopping to an art form. I am not one of them. I have some of the traits: I can find a mall in a city I’ve never visited in less than 10 minutes. I never forget a shop. I know where which types of merchandise are located. I can remember the exact color of the dress I am trying to match. However, I do not have the trait of patience or the gift of endurance.

One amazing day in 1996 my friend (whose name I will not mention both to preserve her privacy and to save her from those who would demand her services) said to me that she was going to take me to buy a dress for my son’s wedding. (Fortunately, this happened just a few weeks before he was scheduled to get married.) Early in the morning we set out. She took me from one shop to the next. As I responded to what we saw, I think she was trying to figure out what I liked. I knew what I didn’t like. I didn’t like many of the colors of the dresses (I am very fussy about colors). When I found a nice color, I didn’t like the style. This dress was too open. This dress made me look like an old woman. This dress was too young. I drove her crazy. Hours later, she was still taking me from store to store. She didn’t give up. I thought I would drop from exhaustion. Then we found the dress. It was perfect. It was also the wrong color. She asked if they had it in another color. The answer was no. I thought it was a very good time to give up. She didn’t. On we went (she had driven; I had no choice.) We must have gone to another four stores when lo and behold, there was the dress. THE dress. It was the right style and in the right color. It was also on special and cost about 20% less than the exact dress in the other store. In my by then semi-comatose state, I thanked my friend, who I have crowned, shopper par excellence, for patience, endurance, and bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

And now here I am, several weeks from another wedding, trying to figure out how to find a dress in a country where people don’t get very dressed up for weddings or other occasions. I am always surprised (or as we said in the South, “tickled”) to see performers and weather people on TV here wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Last summer, we went to a classical concert at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center and one of those who took part in the very formal program was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals—which prompted my sister to ask the question, “What WOULD he get dressed up for?”

So this isn’t an easy place to shop for fancy clothes. But I decided to check out the local stores first. As I went from store to store, I noticed that all of the clothes were for people under the age of 30. I began to formulate in my mind what I would say to a salesperson if I were asked what I was looking for. I decided that I would say that I was looking for something appropriate for someone my age. Of course then I started to grin as I imagined a well-meaning salesperson bringing me a shroud. The concept didn’t work, though. I was still shown ruffled skirts and belly shirts. But this was just the first foray. As John Paul Jones’ wife said, “I have not yet begun to shop!”

I have finally gotten some of the items I needed to do out of the way. I cleared a couple of shelves in the walk-in closet and put in a couple of loads of laundry, washed the breakfast dishes, and watered the plants. I sat down to write, having no idea what it was that I wanted to say when all of a sudden I heard something fall in the kitchen. I could have gotten up to see what it was and perhaps I could have seen without getting up if I strained myself enough to lean forward and look around the corner, but I am convinced it is just another one of my household items that is bound and determined to drive me crazy.

Years ago my husband and I observed “inanimate objects aren’t.” They seem to have a life of their own. Socks, for example, escape during the washing process and frequently take off with the mate of another, not unlike some humans I have heard about. Pencils and pens disappear precisely one minute before you need them. It is useless to search since they are practiced at rolling to the least accessible floor location possible. Leftovers in the refrigerator hide behind other foods and never appear when you need a quick snack, but they miraculously reappear when you are looking for something to serve guests and usually they have by then taken on a blue or green fuzzy appearance. Let’s not even talk about Legos, of which there are never enough for your child to build what he has been working on, but always enough to appear under a bare foot in the middle of the night. How many thousands of dollars of Legos did I throw away for just that reason before I found out that ounce for ounce they are more precious than gold?

So when I heard something fall in the kitchen, I thought: “does it really pay to look?” It didn’t sound as if anything broke, at least not glass, and who knows, when I pick it up, I may find a couple of unmatched socks or perhaps a pen.