Brass Rings and Swear Words

I hate when people ask me what my favorite book is. Not because it's a bad question--in fact, it's something I love to know about people. But it's a tough question, for me at least. When I was in fifth grade, I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and man did I love it. For years and years it was my declared favorite book. Then at some point I thought, "well really, it's just this good book about a poor chick growing up in the early 20th century--seems pathetic for favorite book material." I also realized that it wasn't the book I was rereading constantly--The Catcher in the Rye was. And so my response changed, and though it never wavered from its top spot, after a while I realized that it suffers from the problem of being way too generic a response, and I started answering the question by mentioning that fact, and throwing in Song of Solomon by Toni Morrisson as my second favorite. Pathetic, I know. And I haven't picked it up in years. And I wouldn't have gotten 99% of the symbolism if we hadn't read it in class in Ramaz. And I don't know if any of that matters when calculating your favorite.

So I'm still stuck with Catcher in the Rye, but as the years pass, you encounter more and more people who will love to tell you how average it is, how undeserving of its fame. And maybe they're right--the kid was crazy, the kid was sad, the kid was desperate to save innocent children from a fate which they may or may not want to be saved from but certainly cannot be. And what is that, really? Is it any more favorite-book worthy than Francie Nolan and her Irish alcoholic dad?

But then I sit at the computer late at night, and I inevitably end up on Facebook. And before I know it, I'm searching through the randomest people's pictures and profiles, trying to gauge whether or not they're successful, happy, different. I look at old best friends, old boyfriends, old what-could-have-been scenarios. I see people I know from one end of the earth and people I know from another end of the earth hanging out together at the birthday party of someone I don't even know, and everyone is a stranger to me.

Or, like tonight, for the first time in ages, I like in bed and I think about Morasha Color War, and the brightly colored shelets with neon spray paint or bits of mirrored glass and words like "Din" and "Emet" and "Shalom." I remember that almost twenty years ago, my first year in Morasha, those three teams were orange, green, and yellow respectively. And I wanted the yellow team to win. And they did. And I thought about the camp tapes that I used to listen to for hours and hours--Zach Grauer and Dani Gopin and Danny Gober and Alufot girls singing harmony, and the staff choir singing Flash Gordon. And I really, really miss playing hockey, and to this day, hockey games comprise many of my favorite Morasha memories, from beating Mesorah 14-1 in intercamps to the late-night hockey game in Machon and its later repercussions which bring to mind Goldie Ostreicher, a vacuum cleaner, and a crazy lady whose name I can't remember now. And as totally out of shape as I am now, there's little I wouldn't give up right now for another game, playing defense with Shira Billet or Dani Leeds, Jessica Feld playing goalie, with some rotating combination of Arielle Bresler, Sara Winkler, Chani Lindenbaum, and Aliza Chanales on offense.

And I think, yeah, that book about missing the wonder and innocence of childhood can be my favorite at least a little longer.