Roman Catholic country boy vs. urbanite Jew
The young couple, still at college, and without a penny in their pockets, accept the suggestion of the husband’s parents to go and live with them. They have, of course, never talked about differences in culture. They had more interesting things to do.
SCENE 1:
Young bride, holding her case and her dog, stands on verandah and is greeted by mother in law:
-“You’re right in time to help! We’re going to kill the pig! Change your clothes and join the party!”
-“T-t-o kill t-t-the what?”,stammers young bride, shocked to her very Jewish soul, hopefully hoping she has misunderstood.
-“The killing of the pig, the matanza!”– shouts mother-in-law, evidently believing bride is retarded.
Young bride enters very cautiously, trailing her case (and her dog), and is terrified by sight of monstrous live pig hanging upside down from garage door. Lots of people, children included, are dancing and laughing around monstrous pig, carrying plastic buckets and enormous knives.
SCENE 2:
Young bride locked up inside car with her dog (case lost while running away) with eyes firmly shut and hands covering ears, so as not to hear terrible cries of monstrous dying pig.
Young husband, who hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, tries to get her out of car. He eventually succeeds (love conquers everything).
Young bride finally comes out of car, desperately holding her dog’s leash.
She walks behind her hubby back to house, only to be confronted with sight of monstrous pig hanging upside down quite dead, as its neck is neatly cut and its blood is falling, falling in a red cascade into the, omigod, plastic buckets.
SCENE 3:
Young bride again inside car with her, by this time, extremely confused dog. She is, by this time too, seriously considering divorce. She wants to go back home and tries to remember what button she must push to get car started. She fails miserably as she has never learnt how to drive. Home is, very unfortunately, too far away to go walking, or she would try: 1200 miles away from mum.
Now in-laws, neighbours, children, family friends, hubby (all covered in monstrous pig’s blood) are all surrounding car, but unable to get in: bride has secured all the doors and closed all the windows. She wouldn’t be more terrified if she had married into a cannibal tribe.
No one understands her behaviour: these people have never seen a Jew in their lives. They think she’s a spoilt city brat who doesn’t want to help with household chores.
Finally, after much reasoning and shouting (well, hubby had to shout; bride had her eyes firmly shut again so as not to see pig’s blood everywhere), and after every in-law, neighbour, etc. has left crime scene, she consents to go to house again, if she could just go some way where she doesn’t see monstrous dead bloody pig.
SCENE 4:
Hubby carries her to kitchen. Blood buckets are right in middle of floor, while children mix blood and in-laws throw raisins, pine seeds and sugar… sugar!!! into mixture. Mother of mother-in-law says to her.:
-“You silly thing, if you didn’t want to help no one would have forced you, come sit by my side and we’ll eat one of those delicious sweet blood puddings”
SCENE 5:
Bride cries in bed curled up, all dressed and holding her dog tight in bed as protection from alien in-laws, while hubby sits on armchair with sleeping bag wondering what the fuck is going on.
SCENE 6:
The day after.
Bride discovers wholesome diet of new alien family consists of freshly killed pig with potatoes, boiled pig with potatoes, fried pig with potatoes, liver,kidneys, sausages, pig’s hands, pig’s legs (with potatoes). And a fried egg now and then. With potatoes.
SCENE 7:
A week later:
After six days carefully hiding from in-laws, getting up at five o’clock (with dog) and coming back when alien family is asleep, and living on a diet of boiled eggs (as in-laws cook with pig’s lard, instead of olive oil, like civilised people do), she agrees to join the Sunday meal, as she is promised by her by now much chagrined hubby that everlasting diet of pig is changed on Sunday meals.
She enters kitchen and finds, on table, a roasted rabbit and several plates full of assorted crabfish.
She left the house (with her now fat dog) soon afterwards. In this case, the end of the marriage would not have been a divorce, but a newspaper headline:
HONEYMOON BRIDE DIES OF STARVATION. DOG SURVIVES
I wake up at six
wishing
for a reversal of time
I close my eyes
slipping
peacefully into a silent mist.
My mind still bent
on chasing
slowly vanishing visions
sailing
on fantasies in shades of grey.
resisting
misty reveries
precious silvery slumbers
Volatile dreams flutter
seeking
to clarify my drowsy mind.
I don’t like Mondays….
This wonderful poem is lost as a comment on your joke.
I much prefer your opinion of Mondays to that of Bob Geldof.
The first stanza is evocative of staccatto waking
The second stanza is a drowsy stumble around the morning automaton
The final crisp stanza is the writer fully alert back at a counter at work.
Please post this as a poem.
Robert
Alexa,
I have read this story about 5 times, and it never fails to bring me to tears.
With your permission, I would love to post this on my blog.
I do want to know more about the dog.
This is such a brilliant story/poem. Thank you so much for posting it in WordReference and here. Just a week or two ago, I was telling my “Mum”(Mom in NY) about this.
Abrazos y besos siempre.
Nomi:
The story is mine and I am allowed to post it. But remember it is copyrighted on another website and you need not only my permission, but their permission as well.
My dog, Pippa, appears with me in my WR profile photo.
She was an Alsatian and we loved each other. She had cancer and we were forced to put her to sleep.
Love does not end because we cannot embrace anymore the ones we love. I love her, and I hope there is a somewhere where she loves me too.
Alexa,
I’m sorry about Pippa’s illness and your loss. These words are inadequate.
I believe I did receive an email or PM from a WR moderator (possibly Cherine) giving me permission to quote your piece…but I will check again.
It’s not clear whether you would give me permission to post it…and that’s ok too.
My son and I are preparing to adopt a dog, and plan to volunteer first with dogs at a shelter.
The two mongrels I have now are mother and son and came from a dog shelter (well, he came inside his mother).
My épagneul breton I found in the forests. A hunting dog that can’t hunt and was put to death.
Nomi, it is not that I won’t give you permission to post the story. I cannot.
You have to get WR permission to publish that story. They own the story. And no one is allowed to copy or quote anything without express permission from WR.
That piece is righfully theirs, not mine any longer. I was allowed to post it because I wrote it, but legally it’s not mine.
hello alexa
I am ira (gambling camel) from word reference,
how does wr own a story that you’ve written ?
(especially one that seems autobiographical) btw did you live in the states ? your writing style is sparse, direct, plain-spoken (though of course I haven’t read too much else on this blog)
back to the wedding –>
when I scrolled down to “I wake up at six/wishing/for a reversal of time”
I thought you were taking us inside the mind of the young bride dreaming of going backwards in time before she knew so many details about her husband’s family.
(hey, I can use that image to tie together a few loose ends!!
cheers, alexa
Hello Ira,
WR owns the copyright to everything anyone posts there. You accept it when you sign up.
It`s stated in the rules, but as several foreros say, no one reads the rules. I must be one of the strange ghosts to ever read them.
I understand that WR owns all our posts about vocabulary and grammar.
But if I were to post a poem or short story and
specifically say that it is my own creative work which just happens to be a perfect illustration about English grammar or whatnot,
would WR still own that ?
(in what forum did you post THE WEDDING ?)
Yes, they would.
I posted The Wedding in the Cultural Discussions forum. I don`t remember now the title of the thread, something about intercultural love I think it was.
And to answer your last question, I lived in the UK, but have never been to the States.
The rest; the sooner forgotten the better for everyone.
and what about screen names ?
could wr lawyers tell me years from now that I am not permitted to use GAMBLING CAMEL on other sites?
(of course, I don’t read website contracts before I sign up, I always find it amusing when mods send me a note, saying, “haven’t you read rule 381cz14 ?)
I am not sure about screen names, but I can`t imagine how WR or any forum can have any copyright to a screen name.
Many people write under their own name, including myself.
It would be funny to be arrested for breaking the Law whenever I signed up a receipt for my VISA card.
yeah, that’s true
Of course you had already been using your name for years before you set up a Visa account. I created Gambling Camel explicitly for WR.
Not that WR is Microsoft — and not that “GamblingCamel” is poetic or marketing brilliance
BUT suppose that in the future WR were to develop language products, toys, software — and they decided to feature a gambling camel as the brand logo, would I have any rights to profits?
Or if I were to develop a competitive product, could I be forbidden to use the gambling camel name?
Actually, no corporation would ever dare use GC. Gambling on camel racing in the Middle East is controversial and in fact poor kids are economically forced to become camel jockeys at very young ages.
But other screen names on WR might work very well as brand identifiers. Can’t think of any at the moment.
Can´t you, really?
I´d say one of them, at least, is pretty obvious…. 🙂
Alexa, this clip basically describes my own in-laws experience — U.S.A. style !!
Leithy!!!!
I thought I had lost you all forever!!!
I can´t log in…
We thought we had lost you, too, Alexa. ttt blew up, and we can’t get the owners’ attention to get it fixed, so I made a new place
Nobody seemed to have your email addy, but, luckily, you were easy to google. Come on back home. And have a Happy New Year. ~G~
We thought we had lost you, too, Alexa. Nobody had your email addy, but, luckily you were easy to Google.
ttt got broken, somehow, and since we can’t get the owners’ attention to get it fixed, we made a new place
Come on home. We miss you lots.
(Great blog, BTW. And thank goodness you had shared this story with it. It confirmed for me that this Alexa was actually you. ~G~)
ttt blew up, so I had to make a new place at
We thought we had lost you, too, since nobody had your email addy, but, luckily, you were easy to Google, and this story confirmed, for me, that I had the right Alexa.
Come on home. We miss you
xoxox
Leithy and Pheebs