2 minutes left to post tonight! Go!
Did I ever regale y'all with the story of the Anne Frank bathroom? June over at Bye Bye Pie was talking about Anne Frank, which (because I am a tad shallow) reminded me of an apartment I once lived in, an apartment with a faux-wood-panelled hallway.
Very classy, yes? This apartment was in a college town, in the basement of a gorgeous old house that had been split up into several separate living quarters. It was centrally located, meaning that I could hear all the people leaving the collegetown bars at night - mostly because they stopped in the alley behind my bedroom window to throw up.
I told you - classy.
Where was I? Oh, yes - the hallway....
There was a bathroom opening off the hallway. When the bathroom door was shut, you couldn't see it; it was made of the same fake wood panels as the walls in the hall. I had a friend who, any time he came to visit, would insist on opening what he called the "hidden" door, just to make sure there wasn't a Jewish family hiding in my bathtub.
This cracked us up. Every single time. A different year, we almost got kicked out of Rosh Hashanah services on campus because we were giggling too loudly. Guffawing, actually.
Look, if you weren't brought up Jewish, you won't get it. Just go over to June's place and see what she thinks about everyone's reading a poor dead girl's diary. And be treated to snippets of June's 12-year-old thoughts from 1980, as a bonus...
You are evil. So is June, but I am not telling her that because i don't know her. Come to think of it, I don't know you either, but I know you better than June. Does that make sense? No? It doesn't matter because according to Larry I am an imaginary person and don't exist anyway. But seriously, now every time I will hear the name Anne Frank, I will think about her ghost and giggle like a moron. I can already imagine scarring my daughter with this. Why? Why would you do this to me?
ReplyDeleteOy, I reread the comment for typos, saw Anne Frank and am giggling like a moron. thank you.
Actually, from what I understand, when it was published, the parts that would have been the most mortifying from a teenager's standpoint were mercifully edited out.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for you, when you were younger, hey, that's how kids cope with stuff they don't have the life experience to know how to cope with in any other way: they laugh, they pretend, they make jokes out of it. They tend to go a little far and need to be reined in by the grownups, but they also remind the grownups how to go take a deep breath.
The Diary of Anne Frank. Cracking Jews up since 1947. Alright, maybe 1955.
ReplyDeleteI love you to death, so I think you should know that in the time it takes your site to load, not only could a Jewish family have showed up and hidden in the bathtub, their eldest child could have been called to the Bar Mitzvah.
ReplyDeletexxx
That is funny--and I have to confess a wood paneled hallway is creepy to me. Very creepy.
ReplyDeleteGoing to read the link now.
AlisonH is being kind, attributing my callousness to the foolishness of youth. She doesn't understand - that same friend could come over to my house, right now, 2 decades later, and simply mouth the words, "Jewish family in the bathtub" and we'd laugh so hard we'd cry.
ReplyDeleteI kept a diary until my younger brother read it. I found out from a mutual friend that he had read it, so then I started writing false entries but stupidly, like "This is all just a story" or some other lie like that. I never did find one of my 3 totally filled-out notebooks. If he ever publishes it, there will be hell to pay!!
ReplyDeleteAnd I have friends like that, who can still make me crack up over one phrase, 20 years later.
Your post is making me wonder........If we had a hidden bathroom in our house, would there be a possibility that I could actually answer nature's call without being accompanied by the children.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you think I can find some wood paneling?
That? That is AWESOME! There is nothing better in life that a joke that withstands the test of time and can still make you roll on the floor with laughter years later!
ReplyDeleteSo you're still young at heart, and you have friends who totally get you! This is a good thing!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to make sure you weren't beating up on yourself over it.
I can't imagine my 12-year-old thoughts published for the world to read. It would be an easy, shallow read.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I'm with Mrs. G. There were an astounding number of boy anxieties in my 12-year-old journal. Actually not that unlike Anne. Which is funny, hah hah and strange funny.
ReplyDeleteGotta love the bathtub joke.
That would be exhibit A in why I never kept a diary.
ReplyDelete