Happy holy day.

I am finally going on my first business trip. I am being sent to our main office in New York, Wednesday through Friday. I will miss Melissa and Olivia, obviously, but it should be fun - staying at a hotel in Times Square, taking the Acela train, and possibly meeting up with family and/or friends.

And Melissa went back to work today, and came home not feeling well. Poor girl. But at least when she got home, we got Olivia to talk a lot. Nothing is cuter!

And with Melissa at work today, I stayed home. I took the day off for Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. It's a day of atonement for sins and all that crap. You are supposed to fast, but i don't do that anymore. I guess I finally realized how much of a big deal it really isn't.

It makes me think of living in Brooklyn as a kid, going to yeshivah, surrounded by rabbis and people trying to brainwash you. I remember sitting in high school, not talking much in the Hebrew classes. I remember the "holy" rabbi in one class snorting snuff and giving it to some of the students. And the history teacher making rude comments to the girls in the class.

I never really fit in during my high school years. Mostly everyone was part of the "community" - everyone lived within a one mile radius, except me. There were a few of us that we considered the outcasts - when my friend finally had a car, we would drive during lunch to get whatever non-kosher food we could get. And we were always trying to pull pranks.

Most of the people in this "community," including most of the kids in my class - I didn't like them. Too religious, too full of themselves, too fake.

And not to mention that most of the girls in my school were not that attractive.

So I used to fast all the time on Yom Kippur, eat no bread on Passover. Even go to temple on the big holidays. But why? Will i go to hell if I don't fast? Will all of these fake, closed minded people go to heaven for eating a little matzah? I doubt it. It should all be about being a good person, not about fearing what God is going to do to you if you don't follow some rules that some rabbis a long time ago probably thought up. Besides, who made the decision that you can't use electricity on the Sabbath? Moses certainly didn't know what electricity was back in the day!

If you're going to have a holiday, it should be about friends and family getting together and having fun. There was no fun in going to temple for hours, not even being able to drive there. Ralph and I did used to make the most out of going to temple. We would meet up and walk over, and spend most of our time outside, running into people we knew, and checking out the girls.

The worst was having this one guy come to meet with our class for "spiritual guidance." We were basically medidate in a conference room, right before he would ask us to consider going for our first years in college in Israel. This was the beginning of the brainwashing. If you considered this and went, you came back to Brooklyn totally brainwashed. If you were a bully who made fun of everyone, you came back praying all the time and wanting to be a rabbi. They tried to get me to go, but I wasn't having any of that.

The most fun I had during my high school years was during my senior year. Every year, all the students went on a weekend "seminar" - either in New Jersey or upstate New York, a getaway mostly to talk about all sorts of Jewish stuff. I didn't go on any of them except for the last one, because me and my friends planned on enjoying ourselves. It was on Halloween, and we decided to bring masks and all sorts of weird stuff. We got fake soap and actually got someone to use it and turn himself all blue. We ran around the hotel in masks (I had a Jason hockey mask and a rubber ax). And the best - my friends and I met this guy in the room next to us, some guy with a guitar. We hung out in his room, drinking beer and ordering pizza (not kosher, of course). The rest of our grade was in this one room, singing songs and talking. Lame stuff. In our bag of pranks, we brought rope, and we actually tied up their doorknob with the one next door, basically locking them all in. They were locked in there for hours (and they were trying to get out!) When they finally escaped and (naturally) thought it was my friends and me, we blamed it on the guy we met (who let us do that). That same guy also ran into their room with a mask on, screaming, and scaring the shit out of everyone.

It was always fun fucking with people I didn't like.

Then after Melissa and I were together and got engaged, it felt like I had the whole "community" after me, trying to "bring me back." Those brainwashing experts calling me at home. Rabbis calling me at work. And my crazy aunt writing me a 28 page letter, and sending books to my apartment. And, of course, screaming at Melissa on the phone to "get out!" Those were fun times. Do I miss seeing them every day?

I can only imagine what life would be like without Melissa and Olivia, still being near that "community." There is no way I would have been brainwashed, but how much pretending would I have to do? Would i even meet someone that I would be happy with there? Probably not. I think I made out pretty well - better than anything. And I have the wonderful wife and daughter to prove that.