Imagine — me being feted at the yeshivah dinner
L
ast month, my wife and I were honored at our sons’ yeshivah dinner.
A dinner, for those who don’t know, is what mosdos used to have before matching campaigns and charidy.com were invented. It’s similar to the online campaigns, just you have to find a babysitter, look for parking, make small talk, listen to speeches, and try to catch the waiter’s attention when it looks like everyone except for you got grilled chicken with a mashed-potato tower and snow peas. In exchange for that sacrifice, you get a journal which will then remain on the dashboard of your car for several months, making thumping sounds against the glass every time you stop short.
I had always thought that being guest of honor was just a thing you had to do, a hot potato passed from parent to parent, and when your turn came you manned up and smiled for a picture and then bugged people to pay for ads celebrating you. You twisted your bar mitzvah invitation list inside out, somehow imagining that the same people who sent your son $18 would now sign $360 checks for half a page in a journal.
But it turns out that being parents of the year is real, a designation based on an internal poll sent to hundreds of yeshivah parents. They fill out an intense questionnaire, and the respondents overwhelmingly felt that we were the best parents in the school.
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