Huis Clos

I don’t remember if it was sixth grade or seventh grade, but either way it was before or slightly after my bar mitzvah. I know this because I was in Hebrew School at the time, and the year after my bar mitzvah—known as eighth grade by all the goyim—I left Hebrew Junior High School for something more interesting: Hebrew High School. These Jewish studies, which supplemented my mainstream public school education, were both irrelevant and relevant to me at the same time.

The irrelevancy is evident from this story, since Judaism and what I am currently writing (and what you are now currently reading—both the same) have nothing in common except for the initial location.

In the spring, my Hebrew School would raise funds through a candy sales drive built and publicized around society’s expectation of Passover treats. There is no biblical precedent for Passover candy as there must be for Halloween candy. After all, Halloween candy is offered for free to strangers while Passover candy only changes hands after much begging and pleading with friends, family, and acquaintances. Despite its lack of appearance in holy scripture or scholarly or rabbinical text, the very first door-to-door Passover candy sale must have been the basis for the Hebrew people’s enduring nomadic tendencies.

That year, either sixth or seventh grade (“vav” or “zayin” to those in the know—grades were named, at least in the case of this particular Hebrew School, using Hillel alphanumerics rather than Hebrew (linguistic, not mathematical) cardinals), our teachers presented us with a contest. The best candy seller would receive a thirteen-inch non-cable-ready Sony color television, already a bit of an antique, probably worth around $100 to $125 at the time.

For the years leading up to this point, including my time as a pre-teenager, the idea of having my own television for my bedroom never crossed my mind. I was quite content to watch Dr. Who and the other programs I liked downstairs in the living room or in my parents’ bedroom if I wanted to lie down while watching TV when they weren’t around. Now, with the new idea that I could watch television in the privacy of my own bedroom (that privacy, like the square root of a negative number, was only imagined and not quite real), I set out with a goal in mind.

I became determined to be the best Passover candy salesman that year. Not only would I be doing a mitzvah by raising funds for the synagogue, but I’d win the prize. So I took the order forms, photocopied them, brought them into school to prey on teachers, sent them with both my parents to their respective places of work, called every distant relative for whom I could find phone numbers (this was while my mother and I were the only members of my family with email addresses), and knocked on a few select doors.

Through all the hard work, I did manage to sell the most candy, besting the nearest competitor—either Jessica or Elizabeth, I have little doubt—by some significant amount, maybe $100 or so. After taking the television home, I convinced my parents to spring for a cheap VCR (“cheap” meaning price and alluding to the lack of features—it wasn’t HiFi or even stereophonic) to complete my new entertainment center.

What I admire about this is that I saw a goal, something very tangible and material, and I went for it. It was hard work for me, but with the support of family and friends, I did get what I wanted in the end. Yeah, I’ve got some goals in mind for myself these days, but they tend to be intangible and shifting. It’s hard to pin down a path to a door when the location of the door keeps changing. And sometimes the only goal I can see in front of me is avoiding the urine (see below).

Not physically below, I mean further down on this page.

I can relate this towards something I did in The Sims 2. If you create a house for your virtual individual and them give them a task, they are usually fine. If you quickly change the game to “build mode” and remove the doors while the quasi-artificial quasi-intelligent beings are beginning to move to a new location, the characters get visibly frustrated and their anger is expressed with cartoon thought-bubbles.

Yesterday, I created a room within the game environment and left a few Sims in isolation with no exits but maybe something like a television or radio to keep them occupied occasionally. Their “health” eventually deteriorated. I fully expected them, after some time, to begin channeling Jean Paul Sartre. I was disappointed when they “died” in their own urine rather than “living” in a perpetual Other-People-Hell.