That's like the guy who was trying to pick me up once and slipped about 3 unrpovoked anti-Semetic remarks into a 10 minute conversation. I myself am not Jewish, but most of my closest relatives aside from Mom & Dad are. I only wish I hadn't been too flabbergasted to toast "l'chayim" with my drink.

The closest I've ever come to that was the store clerk at a Clothestime who cheerfully said something about other stores trying to Jew you out of all your money, and who when I objected explained patiently that it was just a expression people use, it didn't have anything to do with Jewish people. When I sputtered out the correct etymology, she looked completely nonplussed and said, "Well, my best friend is Jewish. I'll ask him about it tonight and see what he says." Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation.

There was also the time a boyfriend's father invited BF and me to a steakhouse where he was treating a bunch of friends to dinner; during the pre-meal cocktail hour, several of the more lubricated among them were making snippy little deeply encoded remarks that I can't even recall exactly -- just, the sort of thing one says when one wants to say that kind of thing without actually saying it.

I was just barely self-possessed enough to smile hugely and say, "My grandfather is Jewish!", at which everyone audibly cringed.

Then one woman said with a nervous twitchy grin, "Oh, dear, no, we didn't mean it negatively."

"Oh, no," chirped the twitchy Greek chorus behind her.

Her husband leaned in, all whiskey-hot in the face. "We really admire the Jews, as a people," he said earnestly.

"Oh, yes," his wife nodded, and then ground to a halt, apparently pondering the exact nature of their admiration. Finally, she brightened, and said in a warmly confidential voice, "They're so thrifty."

San Francisco. In the mid-nineties. My hand to God.

One of my old bosses used to make those kinds of remarks, of course prefaced with "I'm not prejudiced or anything, but..."

Dude, I'm a little welsh-cajun-white girl, and if I'm buying something direct wholesale, Imma try to get a deal too. Funny how it never came up when people tried to bargain down at a show.

Jesus, I don't even remember having this conversation with Emmett. Thank god for BRQG:

*********

Emmett: Dad, can you name a monster for every letter in the alphabet, except for the vowels?
Me: So...starting with "B"?
Emmett: No, go ahead and do the vowels too.
Me: Okay. A is...Alien. B is a Balrog.... [bunch of other monsters] and L is....uh....
Emmett: Living Dead!
Me: Right. Good one. M is for Mummies. N is uh....hmmm.
Emmett: National Living Dead!
Me: Excellent choice.
Emmett: I know a good one for Z.
Me: Okay, I'll save that one for you. [bunch of other monsters] ...and U is for Undead. And V is for Voldemort. W is Werewolf. X is X-Ray Vision Man and Y is for Yeti and Z is?
Emmett: Zombie!
Me: Perfect.
Emmett: I helped with some. Like National Living Dead. That was a good one. It would be like a sport like National Football League. Except they wouldn't have any balls they'd just kick around their heads and their hands.

Funny how it never came up when people tried to bargain down at a show.

Welsh-cajun-whiting folks was just too long a verb.

HA!

Thanks, I was getting cranky.

Jew you out of all your money

My mother was shocked to hear this phrase from my grandmother a couple of years ago, as it was far from typical for her. I guess it was something she heard when she was a kid and some 60+ years later just said it without thinking about the implications. She was duly chastened when my mom called her on it.

We were no longer the most hated people in town!

Proof you were there! I think the Italians got the most disdain.

In the further adventures of annoy-sara-to-death, I came home to no water. There is a crew in a hole in the middle of the parking lot still, so I have hope, given it is waaay past quitting time. Plus, it looks like an actual company, not a bunch of bored stragglers dragged from the street and handed shovels. (Yes, I've seen that crew here before.)

Also? Tomorrow is going to SUCK. I've known since last week. I'd rather it didn't. I'd also prefer to have showered for it, rather than taken a bath with a pot.

Welsh-cajun-whiting folks was just too long a verb.

Plus, have you seen anything written in Welsh? Appalling lack of vowels.

In one of the sex discrimination cases my old firm handled, one of the women suing our client went on record at a deposition saying that one of her supervisors was unlikeable because he was "always trying to jew people down".

She then went on to repeat the phrase and define what she meant by it.

You could almost hear her attorney whimper.

So, 10 foot-pounds means that if you have a wrench that's a foot long then you'd apply 10 pounds of force at the end of the wrench, right?