Stumbling Blondely Through Life

First, some kvetching: so last night Rich, Anna Banana II, and I went to the final concert of KlezKamp, but oddly enough it was not a klezmer concert. Instead, a couple of people played cocktail lounge music on the piano, and then they had a Q&A session about what makes music "Jewish." I don't know what makes it Jewish, but I know what makes it klezmer, and this wasn't it. The pianists did not agree about what made music Jewish, in fact they seemed to purposely disagree just to make things interesting. Remembering the proverb "Two Jews, three opinions," I figured that this could go on all night, so we left.

Since Hardingfele was fascinated by my family discussion yesterday, and she is my most faithful reader, I am expounding some more on my background. There is some sort of blonde gene in our family that KO's all the darker genes. It comes from my father's side; his mother had dark hair (but pale skin and blue eyes) yet he is blond like his father. My mother has dark hair and eyes and she tans so well that in the summer she looks like a Native American, and yet my brother and I are pale with blond hair and greenish-bluish-grayish eyes. My sister-in-law has brown hair and eyes, and yet my nephews are blond, and one is very pale like our side of the family. According to the statistics of genetics, this is not impossible, just unlikely, but obviously the reality of genetics isn't the same as the expected probability of a given trait appearing, and this must be one mean blonde gene.

How blonde am I? I have previously related the story of hearing someone's voice coming out of the speakers and not realizing it was mine, but it bears repeating. It was at a bluegrass jam, and I made the mistake of suggesting a song ("Long Journey Home"), which I hadn't realized meant, in bluegrass etiquette, that I should then lead the singing. So as I was singing, "Nothin' in my pocket but a two-dollar bill, Lord, a two-dollar bill," I could hear a woman behind me with a lovely voice, and I let up a little to let her take it, but whenever I backed off, so did she! So then I'd take it up again, and so would she! FINALLY it dawned on me that I was hearing myself. When I told some band members about this, they said it was like not recognizing yourself in a mirror, and I said, "Yeah, there was the time I wondered why the woman in the next booth was staring at me... until I realized it was a mirror." The fiddler laughed so hard I thought she might asphyxiate.

However, the ultimate blonde moment in my life may have been the secret message in the driveway. I live in a condo complex, and one night while walking home from my second job I noticed someone had painted "M075" in the middle of the driveway. Since it was clearly a professional job, I knew it must have some purpose, but I could not deduce what it might be. Then the moth planes began flying around, spraying the anti-gypsy moth bacteria all over the neighborhood, and I wondered if M075 were a signal to them. When I mentioned it to T, she asked me to show her the mysterious label, and when I pointed it out to her, she said, "You mean where it says SLOW?" Yeah, OK, maybe that's what it says in the OTHER direction...

Famous Hat