"Since that bathroom scene/ There's been a slight concern."
- Tom Petty
Over the course of the semester, a lot of people have asked me why my column seems to have no theme. Week to week it's been a column about nothing, this much is true. So I thought it would be appropriate for this near-final article to give some insight into the Seinfeld-ian randomness of my topics.
Now, it's hard to convince strangers that your life is one giant "Seinfeld" episode, but the most common reaction my friends give my anecdotes is, "That could only happen to you." I don't know if art imitates life or life imitates art here - but this has been happening ever since I was seven and apologized to an amusement park Santa Claus because I felt guilty for being Jewish and still asking for a present on his lap.
This past weekend I went to Manhattan for a family Passover. All the marquee names were there. There were Kahns with a K, Cahns with a C, Steins with an "ei" and Stynes with a "y." There were bubies, zadies, menches and meshuganas. Goldsteins, Goldbergs, Greenbergs, Greenbaums, Hirschbaums, Hirschfelds and yes, Seinfelds. So with the stage set for a Woody Allen movie - or an accountants' convention - I was able to make a fairly educated guess that I might be stepping into a "Seinfeld" day. Because after all, I put the Jew in ejewcated guess.
After a four-hour drive down, I walked into my cousin's apartment for a nice pre-Passover brunch of bagels, lox and cream cheese - the three staples that sustained our people through 40 years of wandering the Egyptian desert. I put my bag down, got my cheeks pinched as the perpetual 6-year-old I will always be to my grandparents and went to the bathroom.
Now this is a Manhattan apartment bathroom, so it is small. Like, you could wash your hands, brush your teeth, take a shower and plop out some matzo balls all from the same seat if you want. After partaking in half of those activities, I turned to unlock the door. However, when I turned the deadbolt knob back, the knob moved. The bolt didn't.
Fast forward 10 minutes and there are 15 people standing outside the door offering advice along the lines of "Did you turn it ALL the way?" as if perhaps this was my first experience with a lock and door. Now, of all the anxiety, phobias and neuroses spicing up the family gene pool, who'd have thought a relative trapped in the bathroom would be one of the hot buttons?
So after an hour of doing my best Andy Dufresne, Cool Hand Luke and Steve McQueen solitary confinement impressions, rearranging the decorative soaps, and counting the 418 tiles on the floor, broken only by intermittent attempts to assure my relations that, "Yes, I already tried turning the handle," they got a handyman to knock out the lock entirely ... which naturally shot across the room into my stomach as I sat waiting on the toilet. I was greeted by more cheek pinches, an already emptied brunch table and a new answer to "why is this night different from all other nights?"
So began my Passover in New York, and just like all good "Seinfeld" episodes, it has to wrap around at the end. So naturally, upon getting back to Tufts tonight I found myself locked out of the house and had to break in through the bathroom window. Enter laugh track. Cue the bass line.
Ari Goldberg is a senior majoring in history. He can be reached at Ari.Goldberg@tufts.edu.
