The Funny Lady On My Block
A colleague of mine wrote this, and I felt the need to share it.
A Lesson in Humanity
There's a lady on my block, that's, well, kind of weird.
Whenever she walks down the street she talks to all the children. She makes funny faces at babies. She throws candies down the backyard to the neighbor's children. She doesnt really act normal -- which normal lady her age (she's in her 20's) talks to all the kids on the block and makes funny faces at them?
So the kids on the block decided to be mean to her. They started mimicking the way she walks and making faces back at her. She's a funny lady, no? She's weird. So the kids decided to show her that she's weird. They started copying her gait and her way of talking.
Every night the lady went home after the mean treatment by the girls on the block and cried. You see, this lady had no children, even though she was married for a number of years. And she loved kids so badly that she longed to be their friend. She tried, but was rebuffed by the unthinkingly cruel kids on the block. She loved kids so much she interacted with babies in grocery stores and even made funny faces at non Jewish toddlers in trains. But the girls on her block were cruel as kids are, and did not realize all of that.
So the day came when the lady started ignoring the girls. She would march straight down the block and ignore the girls, while her heart broke inside. The girls still made fun of her, making catcalls and mocking her. She fought back her tears and thought to herself, "I hope HaShem never punishes them. May they never feel how I do." And with a broken heart she would completely ignore the girls that she simply tried to reach out to, because she loved children and had none of her own.
And so the months passed and her neighbors got used to the stoic face and ramrod straight marching of their strange neighbor. The taunting slowly stopped. Until one day, when one of the little torturers was going collecting for tzedakah and knocked on the door of the funny lady. The funny lady was in the middle of peeling potatoes for supper. She opened the door and there stood one of the nine year old girls who had been making fun of her for three years.
The lady looked at her, gave a broad smile, asked what tzedakah she was collecting for, and gave the little girl a dollar and a smile and wave. The girl smiled back happily. The funny lady was apparently not so funny after all. She was pretty normal. She just loved children very much and that's why she acted like a kid herself, sometimes.
This incident took place two hours ago.
The funny lady on my block, is me.
- Annonymous
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