I hoped you would become: The nice-, kind-, happy-, good to your neighbor-, love your family-, be charitable-type of human being.”
“But Max, if you are a Mensch, how can a human also be a Mensch?”
“That’s easy. I made you in my image—in my likeness. Remember? You have heard of that concept before, haven’t you?”
Without waiting for a response, GOD said, “So, be a Mensch and tell me all about yourself.”
“What is this, a date?”
Understanding the source of his fear and reluctance to divulge personal things, GOD ignored Boogie’s sarcasm and controlled the urge to just smite him. Instead, GOD said soothingly, “No this is not a date. It is a Determination.”
“What is that supposed to mean? I don’t understand.”
“You always want to know what something means, but won’t make the effort to thoroughly investigate the concepts. But to get you started—to motivate you—a Determination is your opportunity to tell me all about yourself. It will determine your fate. So please begin.”
“What happens if I don’t want to tell you?”
“The same thing if you do tell me and don’t reveal yourself honestly.”
“How much time do I have?”
“That is what is going to be Determined.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You have always had choices and this is no exception.”
“How did I do?”
“How did you ‘do’ with what?”
“With my choices.”
“You did!”
“I did what?”
“Everything. You did everything you wanted to do.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“What didn’t you do?”
“A lot of things. I could give you a list, but it would take forever.”
“I have forever. It will be entertaining. It’s my job.”
“You have a job?” Ben asked incredulously.
“Of course.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No, that would take forever,” said GOD sardonically.
“I have time,” said Boogie, admiring the return cut. Then, trying to be funny and still believing his bantering with GOD could delay the inevitable, he added coyly, “I have lots of time.”
“Do you?”
Silence.
Then, after a long delay to consider the possible consequences of his next question, Ben asked thoughtfully, “What does that mean?”
“It means: Go slow. Take it easy. Settle down. Take a deep breath … Relax. Tell me who you are, what you think you did, and what you fear. What you believe and what you think you didn’t do. Your accomplishments, your regrets. Unload. Get it off your chest. Give it your very best shot.”
“Sometimes you talk funny, I mean unusual,” Ben said, quickly correcting himself.
“I speak so you can understand me. So that there is no ambiguity.”
“But there has been. Your answers sometimes confuse me.”
“And your questions are not always clear, or appropriate. You forget yourself. You forget to Whom you are speaking … So let’s get started. Tell me all about yourself. Tell me everything important about your life, but please spare me the details!”
≈ Besides, I already know them ≈
“Just sit down on that sofa over there. Make yourself comfortable.”
“Okay.”
“If you get stuck, or lose your concentration, or get bored, I may ask you some questions to coax you along, encourage you, help you to remember, jog your memory, inject a few points, or just call attention to some contradictions.”
“No problem.”
“Remember, I just want a summary—your impressions about the things that had meaning for you.”
~~~~~~~~~~
From Philadelphia to Woodstock
“Well … the first thing that comes into my mind is Harriet Weitzman and the summer of ‘69 in Woodstock.
“Even though I don’t have a lot of specific recollections about Philadelphia, for some reason, when someone says its name, that’s my association with it. As you remember, we were up at Woodstock and then I … we left. Uh, I left after like the third day, and came down to Philadelphia. Broke! Panhandled enough money at the Port Authority to get a bus to downtown Philly. And then basically walked from downtown to Northeast Philadelphia. And I, uh, we hooked up then.
“Actually, if you remember, we got together a night or two after that and we drove back via the Garden State Freeway—”
≈ I thought it was a Parkway ≈
“—you and I, back to the mountains and Woodstock and back to the bungalow that we had in White Lake, where we had friends sleeping on dinettes and floors and every which way—”
≈ You and I? It was only you. Who had a place together? And what’s with all the ‘WEs’? ≈
“—where Kenneth Cagle and myself worked the mountains that year, and we had the bungalow in White Lake and, little beknownst to us—at the beginning of the season, which is Memorial Day—that this huge event was going to take place.
“We knew there was a concert. We had tickets to the concert. And we knew there’d be a lot of people there: twenty—, or 30,000 people. And then the morning of Woodstock—the first day—we got there about eight-thirty in the morning. We took farm back roads to get there. We knew how to get around. We were, quote, locals—so to speak. And when we got there, there were 200,000 people already there! And they were still poundin’ and makin’ the stage, and we were bumpin’ into people that we hadn’t seen in years, from our high school days in Miami. And, obviously, we were very ill-prepared for the experience, because, you know, we had money in our pockets and figured you could buy whatever, a hot dog or this or that, but in the meantime, it didn’t work that way.
“You had to wait in these huge lines!
