Jew For A Day

Something big and ugly and throbbing was growing on my head. It was like a unicorn horn, but without the whimsy. It was like a volcano, but without the virgin-heave. It was like too many similes, or irony on a rainy day...

Finally, I went to the dermatologist and was told it was a pilar cyst. She explained it was a problem with lots of pus built up in a clogged pore and that got crusty with scabby puke material needing to be popped like a deranged circus clown's nose.

"Right," I said. "Clown. Gotcha."

On Wednesday, I had my surgery. It was fun telling people I was going in for surgery. I got to indulge in tragedy without actually having to die soon.

"M-mom? Yeah, I have to go in for... for... surgery...." Lip quiver. "Yeah, I'm pretty scared. No, I think... I-I'll be all right. But just in case put 'He Tried to Try' on my headstone."

(In a way, I was getting a headstone taken out. Surgically!)

A young woman, who looked about seventeen, blonde and wearing big Professor Frink glasses, performed the major surgery. She pricked my scalp with forget-me-now juice. Then, with the help of another teenaged assistant, she cut into my head.

"Slice, slice," she murmured whimsically as she dug out the inflamed ball of gooey green pus.

"Just take a little off the top."

Eventually I was left an inch shorter. I now had to go to the DMV to change the specs on my license.

As the assistant stitched me up, she decided to make conversation.

"You work for the library? Oh, I never go myself, but the doctor here goes all the time. He gets Game of Thrones, but he has to wait so long for it. We all tease him because he makes a lot more money than the rest of us."

I smiled. "A Jew, huh."

But the joke was on me because I came out of the procedure looking a shade Zionist.

"Shalom, l'chaim hannaka mazel tov, my children..."

Time to get out the mezzuzah and phylactery and blow on that big ol' shofar. And hell no I won't pay for HBO.

The next day I was sitting at my accustomed place in the universe when a man in Sikh garb said he had a "confession." He was late in returning his book on One Direction.

Because of my headgear, he seemed to think I could relate to him on a spiritual level.

"I will love you FOREVER, Zayn!!!"

"That'll be four dollars and twenty cent," I said.

Render unto Caesar, my good man.

He leaned forward as if in obesiance, and then noticed my little hat was a fraud.

"What the fuck?"

"A cyst," I said, sagaciously. "Now, go, and sin no more. Hai tev lohaimai elohim!"

I was late for temple.