When I entered junior high school, one of the more enjoyable differences from elementary school was that we were allowed to leave the school grounds during lunch hour. And one of the main benefits of that privilege was the opportunity to visit the nearby stores, of which there was no shortage nor lack of variety: convenience stores, delis and bakeries abounded.
One day, a good friend of mine told me that we were going to go to the bakery, which was just a few minutes from the school grounds. So off we went. When we got to the bakery, he asked the lady behind the counter:
"How much is one cookie?"
Since the cookies were sold in boxes by the pound, she was not going to charge us for just one cookie, so she very generously gave us each a free cookie. If I recall correctly, my friend reacted to this gesture with a great show of surprise, as if he would never in a million years have anticipated this turn of events.
When we left with our booty, my friend and I beamed at each other, as if we had just pulled off The Great Train Robbery.
Of course, the great disadvantage of this particular business venture was that it was pretty much a one-time operation. I mean, we couldn't exactly go to the same bakery every day and ask for one cookie, could we? and there were only so many bakeries within walking distance.
About ten years later, I met someone who had a more durable system.
I was a graduate student in Manhattan, living in a dormitory. In addition to our regular course load, one of the great academic challenges we students faced was not having to eat our Sabbath meals in the student cafeteria. Not that the cafeteria food was particularly substandard – on the contrary, my memory is that it was quite serviceable – but for an out-of-town student living on campus, a home-cooked meal in an actual home with a dining room and real dishes and everything was a very welcome contrast to institutional life.
Of my two years at this school, I had to spend only a very small handful of weekends on campus, since I had found a position chanting from the Bible at a Synagogue on Saturday mornings, a position which came with hospitality at the home of one of the attendees of the Synagogue.
But I once met a fellow student who was not fortunate enough to have such an arrangement. He shared with me his solution to the weekly dietary dilemma: on Friday mornings, he would go to one of the local supermarkets, and proceed to the poultry section. He would pick up a whole chicken. And then, like a cheetah, he would survey the scene for his prey. Ah! he has sniffed her out with his keen radar (and the winner of this year's most egregious mixed metaphor goes to...): a kindly-looking Jewish woman!
"Excuse me?"
"Yes?"
"Um, how do you make chicken?"
"What? You've never made chicken? So you are alone and you have no place for the Shabbat meal tonight? Why, that's just awful! Of course you will come and eat with us. Our address is..."
The title of this post pays homage to Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois, with whom my crafty friend must have felt a keen affinity. Although I must say that P. T. Barnum's adage about certain types who enter this world every sixty seconds may have often sprung to his mind as well.
