Back in the Dark Ages, in the pre-internet world, it was possible to wonder things, but never find quite enough gumption to go through the effort of looking things up. It wasn't as easy as pulling your phone out of your pocket to know the entire body of all human knowledge (or to look at pictures of kittens). You actually had to know someone who knew things, or at least know a librarian who knew how to look up things in books. And if it didn't fit into your schedule to go to a library, or to ask your friends questions that might reveal your own inexperience or ignorance of a topic, then you went years, maybe your whole life not knowing certain things. Like the meaning of the words in the opening to Laverne and Shirley. Thirty-seven years ago, give or take, I first heard the chant, of what sounded like made-up syllables to a little girl. I never quite made out the actual words when I was young, and by the time I was a teenager, I had outgrown the show, and didn't think much about it again, as its viewership dropped off and was eventually canceled. In the era of cable television, I came across an occasional rerun, and eventually understood the words, even if I had no idea what a schlemiel or a schlimazel were. Tonight, that little factoid was finally offered to me unbidden, and I am pleased to be able to check that little box in my quest to attain all possible trivial knowledge. One of the people I had dinner with tonight was a gentleman a few years older than myself, and he told me funny stories of his siblings. He said his brother was the messiest eater he'd ever met, but no food ever landed on him. His flying debris tended to cover all around him, whether human or furniture or other. He explained that his brother was the schlemiel, and the rest of the family were the schlimazels. In simple terms, his brother is the spiller, and they were the spillees. I laughed at the folksy definition, and assumed it was a real world application for a much more complex sort of character. In order to get my spellings right, I looked it up on wordsmith.org, and there it was, almost the exact same simplification: "In a restaurant, a schlemiel is the waiter who spills soup, and a schlimazel is the diner on whom it lands." To my ten year old self, wondering whether they were really words, the answer is yes. Good ones, that I need to learn to use in the future.
My furry kids are looking a little worse for wear. We had a trip outside to play, and while I wasn't looking, my large boy cat got a big scrape on his noggin. His temple has a pea-sized patch of bare, bloody skin. No idea what he did, but I immediately rounded everyone up and closed the door, to prevent him from rolling around and getting dirt in it. Yesterday, I came home from the grocery store, to a phone call from my neighbor across the street telling me that there was a very naughty white kitty on my roof. I went upstairs and found my screen knocked out, and an escapee who had squeezed herself through a three-inch wide opening. When I opened the window the whole way and called to her, she acted like she was in a panic, and immediately came inside, from her perch way over on the other side of the garage. It wasn't until today that I noticed that her cheek, right above her lip, was scraped up and looking very tender. I shudder to imagine her slipping on the slope of the roof, and scraping on those brand new asphalt shingles, in a desperate attempt to avoid falling. I feel like I can't turn my back for a second around here. I had visitors while I progressed on my cleaning and organization project upstairs, with them taking turns sitting in the window, overseeing the back yard. I think I need to make a cushioned window seat for that spot, but only if they promise not to push out the screens anymore, since that window drops not to a porch roof, but straight down onto the a/c unit.
I saw more signs of spring today. I got my first crocus and daffodil bloom, and I didn't even realize they were this close. There will be many, many more to come. My busy season is just getting started.
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