You may have deduced that my boyfriend is Jewish. Jewish more in an "I love latkes & mezuzahs" way & less in an "I attend temple weekly & wear a yarmulke" way. He has slowly been learning about Mormons and tries his best to understand (or at least know) our religious and cultural traditions. For example, one day he proudly presented me with this:
Printing random things off the internet is his #1 hobby
As we have dated I have seen just how much my religion affects simple daily life. And how much I define myself and everyone else by religion. When I finally started accepting that I was in fact dating this man and had to admit it to people, the first thing I told everyone was that he was Jewish. It is, after all, the most distinguishing factor between him and everyone else I have dated in the past 10 years. He was not so enamored with the idea of being succinctly summed up as "The Jew" and often complained about how there was so much more to him that his religious traditions. I responded that telling my friends "He has green eyes" was much less informative and I could not possibly lead with that fact. So I let him meet my friends and now they call him by his name rather than "Brooke's Jewish boyfriend." Problem solved.
That is until I let him read my blog. I started getting text messages with all kinds of suggestions of other names I could use for him in place of The Jew. He did not seem to understand that I like to pick names for people that reflect what I love about them and kept suggesting adolescent nicknames his friends gave him. It was ridiculous. I mean, spanning multiple months ridiculous. But since he has asked me for precisely two things in our entire relationship (this & to meet the 'Rents), I have acquiesced. So, henceforth The Jew will be known on here as The Beard (b/c I made him grow a sexy beard/I like the lesbian undertones). Because if he's going to complain that much about his name on my blog (where really he should be honored he was mentioned at all), I get to make it into a lesbian joke.
3 comments:
Haha! Oh, man, Brooke. I miss you. That is all.
I can only imagine the terrible... contention you had to go through in order to rename someone on your blog. No doubt your inner turmoil must have been tumultuous, or like, something bad. Word!
I just love all of this post. All of it.
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