Misplaced Condolences

After the Bar Mitzvah!

So this week we’re talking about LOL moments, and, no big surprise to anyone who knows me, but as it just so happens, I just had one.

Recently we were invited to attend my friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, so the day before the event I ran to the store and bought a card.

It was one of those “blank inside” cards wrapped in plastic. I liked the illustration, I liked the fact that it was blank inside since I prefer to write my own messages, and, as it was, I was in too big a hurry to read through a bunch, so I grabbed it, paid for it, and ran.

It wasn’t until the next morning, just before leaving for the Bar Mitzvah, and already running late, that I realized it wasn’t blank inside AT ALL.

It was a sympathy card that had been shoved in the “blank inside” section.

Okay, I thought. It’s not like its overly sympathetic. Noticing how it merely said something a long the lines of: “Thinking of you during this difficult time.” And since her son has a good sense of humor, and since prepping for a Bar Mitzvah can be difficult (or so I’ve heard), I shoved a check inside and decided to go with it.

My husband and I set out for the temple (still running late), and as I’d never been to this temple before, was unfamiliar with this part of town and didn’t realize it was actually “temple row”—the first temple I saw I told my husband: “Pull over here, and hurry—we’re late!” And even though GPS insisted we had a ways still to go, he decided to listen to me instead.

By the time we snuck in, the bar mitzvah was already in progress, and as it was an Orthodox temple the men and women were seated separately with a partition placed between them.

I grabbed an empty seat and looked all around, thinking how strange it was that I didn’t know my friend belonged to an Orthodox temple, and once I got settled with that, I realized I didn’t recognize a single face in the room—including the boy being Bar Mitzvahed. After about ten minutes of my husband and I shooting each other quizzical looks from across the partition, he motioned for me to join him outside, and said, “I think we’re at the wrong temple.”

Turns out, we were. Which meant we were now really, really late for the intended Bar Mitzvah and all we had to make up for it was a sympathy card with a check shoved inside.

Luckily, my friend and her son both share the same great sense of humor, so no harm was done, but in the future, I’ll double check my cards, and bow to the wisdom of GPS.

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