I went to Schwartz bakery on Melrose to get a special birthday cake for Carol, and before I went she typed to me (I was at work), “Get some fresh holy bread.” I typed back, “Holy bread?” And she said, “Yeah, it’s yummy!” Okay, holy bread. What do I know.
So I walk into Schwartz and ask about the cake, and the ancient woman behind the counter says, “HAAAAH?” every time I say anything, so I just figure she’s old and half deaf and this is the way it’s going to go.
She fetches the cake and spends several painful minutes putting it into a box and taping the box shut and then putting the box into a bag, and on and on it went, then when she was finished she asked, “ANYTHING ELSE?”
So I repeated, louder, “Holy bread…do you have any fresh holy bread?”I asked her if there was any fresh holy bread, to which she predictably responded, “HAAAAH?”
“HAAAAH?”
“Do you have any holy bread today?”
“HAAAAH? WHAT? NO, NO, NO…HAAAAH?”
“Just the cake, thanks.”
When I got home Carol asked about the bakery, if it smelled good and what they had, and I told her there was no bread, not even a loaf of dark rye. The bread basket at Schwartz bakery is empty on Sunday afternoon, man.
“I even asked for holy bread,” I said, “and the crazy old woman just said, ‘HAAAAH?'”
“Challah bread,” Carol said. “it’s called challah bread.”
The moral of the story is: don’t walk around acting like you know something about something when you really don’t know anything. If you’re smart, you’ll admit to yourself right now that you don’t know anything about anything.
One day I’m going to learn that.