*Part one in a series of 'Things that have no bearing in my adult life and really don't give a shit about one way or another but continue to talk about because I think they're hilarious.
So. I went to a Jewish private dayschool from the age of two through eighth grade, and anyone who has any experience with the world of Jewish dayschools will know... there is a lot of pageantry involved. Little mock festivals where every kid has one or two lines of dialogue, and you sit in a row and basically go down the row and say your line. Fun times. Your parents go and pretend to like it but really, they're wondering why they're paying ridiculous tuition so their progeny can mumble badly-written verse about the Founding Fathers/The Pilgrims/The Ten Commandments/Whatever Have You.
My pre-k class did one called Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat where, as the name might suggest, everyone's grandparents were invited and a lovely time was had by all. We made teddy-bear cutouts with a Hershey's Hug in one hand and a Hershey's Kiss in the other and it was all rather adorable, right? (Why do I still remember this in such vivid detail? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know.)
Well, it wasn't adorable if you were me. You see, Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat was themed around figures from the old testament. Every kid was assigned one and then you had a line about it. So there was an Adam and an Eve, a Noach, an Abraham and a Sarah etc etc etc all the way down the line to Moses/Miriam/Aaron. The girls had these really pretty brightly colored shawls that, in retrospect, were just chiffon handkerchiefs but god damn it I wanted one.
Except I was a twin, so I didn't get to be one of the four mothers or Eve or Miriam or even Dinah. No, when pre-kindergarden Judaica teachers get ahold of a pair of twins, their year is basically made. Said Twins will be constantly referred to in relation to Jacob and Esau. When Bubbe-Zayde Shabbat rolls around, those twins are definitely going to be Jacob and Esau. Even if one of those twins is a girl (even if both of those twins are girls, I bet).
So, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, good. Esau, bad. Jacob, pretty. Esau, ugly. Jacob, sweet. Esau, bad tempered rhinoceros. Jacob's costume was, like, a bathrobe and a shepard's crook. Esau got an itchy red shearling vest, because Esau, as everyone knows, was a hairy redheaded brute. I mean, let's not even kid ourselves, the guy was a temporally-displaced Viking.
Guess who was Esau. I'll give you three chances but you only need one.
She's got two thumbs and she's sitting right in front of you. That's right, Leez was Esau in her pre-kindergarden Bubbe-Zeyde shabbat! I was not happy about this serious case of miscasting. Why didn't I get to be a pretty girl? Didn't they know my brother and I weren't identical? I definitely sat through the whole pageant with a sour look on my face. There wasn't a temper-tantrum involved that I recall, but there should have been. I wanted a goddamn scarf!
But there I was, stuck next to my brother who got to be the good twin and was just so satisfied with his lot in life and I was the only villain on the whole line-up. I got to be the idiot who traded their birthright for a bowl of soup. But for some reason, the worst injustice to me wasn't being forced to crossdress in a school play at the age of four, wasn't that I had to play the biggest dumb brute in the whole Torah, wasn't that I didn't get a pretty scarf (although the pretty scarves were a close second) - it was that they got our birth orders wrong. I'm the younger twin. I should have been Jacob!
I don't know how I ever grew into a functional adult. But somehow I managed.
/sarcasm mode off.
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