My wife is outstanding at planning and logistics. Really outstanding. She has a gift I can only describe as second sight, and she's an excellent shopper, with the unfailing ability to get the very best products at the very best prices. If she wasn't a scholar, she'd be a fantastic administrator, and if she were a soldier instead of a scholar she would be a quartermaster, first class. In fact, if the DovBear family was the US military we actually would have been greeted with flowers because the enemy combatants would have been too well fed to even consider lifting a weapon against us.
So it came as no small surprise, on Tuesday morning, to discover that Mrs. DovBear had omitted to buy sugar for Passover. Otherwise, her holiday provisioning was perfect. Our refrigerator is stocked with steak and salmon, and potatoes, squash, tomatoes and onions. We have sufficient pots, pans and aluminum cooking trays. Plenty of forks, knives, plates and spoons, too. We even have cholov yisroel cheese that tastes like cheese and not like the inside of a garden hose. And of course, there is plenty of juice, soda, milk, coffee and tea. But no sugar.
I'm one of those sad, unhappy people who need coffee if they are to function properly. And coffee - especially the instant coffee with which we afflict ourselves at Passover - requires sugar. On Tuesday, I drank my coffee without sugar. (If the DovBear family was the military that would deserve a Purple Heart) And instead of complaining about the abscence of sugar (a Silver Star) I very gently and politley said, with a tone that was at once considerate, sensitve and non-complaining, "Hey, no sugar?"
Mrs. DovBear had the answer. You, who have no second sight, probably thought the answer was "Oh, sorry. Can you pick some up on your way home from work," but you are ignorant and foolish. You don't have the gift.
Mrs. DovBear, who does have the gift, together with a brilliance surpassed only by her thriftiness, replied: "Oh, sorry. Can you bring home some sugar packets from work?"
Sure. Why not? Sounds reasonable. Besides, I thought, Passover is all about sacrifice, and flexibility, and acting bizzarly for the amusment of the gentiles. So, while some other bloggers were suffering the deep humiliation of eating matzoh at work, I was raiding the break room and filling my pockets with pilfered sugar packets.
Some of you are thinking: Do you live in Siberia? Why didn't you just go to the store, and buy some sugar? That's an excellent set of questions. Really first rate. And you know what? An even better question would be, "Why, DovBear, did it take you all the way until Thursday morning to come up with that idea?"
This afternoon, I am so going to the store.
