Open Window

77% Weekly Newsletter

Son,

When I asked you to “close all the windows” after using my office computer, I was not referring to the glass and wood, three-paned window situated above the large Acer 45” monitor.

No, I was talking about the full-page, Google chrome windows you opened on the large display and were using to watch Breaking Bad—while simultaneously flooding your system with dopamine, playing the 1990s classic PC game Minesweeper on the 27” HD LCD monitor to the left.

I was talking about the window, the virtual window in front of you.

I assumed you could have deduced that I was not referring to the not now and every actually haven been opened glass and wood portal to the outside world.

I assumed you would have known I wanted the virtual windows you opened, closed.

But you didn’t.

You simply pass me as you left my office. Without shutting down your programs.

“Hey!”  I bark sternly, thinking you were in the wrong and I in the right.

You look at me with the surprise of a puppy just smacked.

I’m sorry.

Now.

Apparently it wasn’t obvious.

I was in the wrong.
Thinking I was right.

You weren’t disrespecting me and my office (as I thought you were). You thought I was talking about the upper, closed glass window.

If it were obvious that what I meant, you would have known it.

Emmett, I am sorry if my lapse in judgment reinforced any trope in your mind that there is something wrong with your thinking.

You are welcome to come back and any time you want.

You left your geometry book here, by the way.

-Dad

With love,
Rabbi Brian

——–LIVE! Saturdays at 8am PT
Stream   LIVE :  ROTB site (here). Or on Facebook / YouTube

What We Pass Down

“I have the honor of sitting with the Rabbi,” Martin says as I find my seat at the reception to celebrate his granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah. At times like this, I’m not just Brian. I’m Rabbi Brian. A stand-in for God, Judaism, and all religious persons they’ve met in the past. ✧ ✧ ✧ “We pass the Torah from generation to

Read More »

See Me.

Shoes.Shoes.Shoes.  The long glass wall separates me from a display of more than 100,000 shoes at Auschwitz-Birkenau.  Men’s shoes and women’s shoes and children’s shoes and baby shoes.  Everyday shoes and work shoes and formal shoes and boots and sandals and slippers and high-heeled shoes and orthopedic shoes.  Woven sandals and wooden-soled shoes and leather shoes and cloth shoes.  Shoes

Read More »

Last Tuesday / This Tuesday

Last Tuesday. I’m sitting in an Adirondack chair, my feet resting on a well-weathered log here in Sisters, Oregon. It’s my family’s annual week-long vacation at the same beautiful house we’ve rented for the past four summers. My favorite spot. Just above the little creek. Most of my worries are 153 miles away. ✧✧✧ This Tuesday. I’m sitting in my

Read More »
77% Weekly Newsletter
77% Weekly Newsletter