Once again as a final send off of the individual hostages, a crowd ominously surrounds them for one final sadistic parting jab. At least that is how various hostages have described their feelings of being threatened by the mob seeing them off. Ten down 90 to go. Thereabouts. Hint: read right to left (or left to right) to answer the question below the photo.
In this week’s Parsha the Jews (aka as Israelites, or tka then known as …) are commanded to sacrifice lambs and put their blood on the doorposts so that the the 10th and last plague, the death of the firstborn, will not be visited upon their homes. But there are a few problems with this scenario. Surely God would know which houses to visit, even without the blood? And the Haggadah does emphasize that it was God and not an angel of death. Also the lambs were to be held bleating in the houses for four days in advance of their slaughter and then roasted — both so that the Egyptians would hear and smell what was going on and get riled up because they worshipped the lamb and would be angry that the Jews were slaughtering their gods. And this was to force the Jewish people to show their mettle, their moxie, their chutzpah!!
This story & the condoms in the news this week reminded me of the expensive lambskin condoms that used to be sold. I suppose they still are. Discussing the product with some still active, they were clueless. Had never heard of them. Our friends google Amazon and CVS indicate they are still available, by mail anyway.
I first happened upon some condoms in 4th grade. My friend and I found a huge multipack box — like a wholesale size box filled with smaller 50 pack boxes — in the middle of the road. We filled them with water and had a grand time — and I truly thought they were just balloons, like the Gazans who used them to carry incendiary devices into Israel and start fires back in 2017. www.jpost.com/...
This came to mind from the fake news this week that the trumply dogers had stopped $50M worth of condoms from being shipped to Gaza under Biden’s budget. www.timesofisrael.com/... Someone else followed up that shocking news with an analysis that it was a reasonable amount to be spent for approximately 500k Gazan men— only $100 each or maybe 100 condoms each per year. Others posited the absurdity in that birth control by and large not a thing in certain cultures. Judaism and Catholicism both ban the condom. Perhaps Islam does as well? At least for birth control purposes.
Be that as it may, my 4th grade friend seemed to know what the condoms were really for because she told me to hide my half of the remaining boxes we divvied up so I hid them in my sock drawer where my mother was very upset to find them. She wanted to know what I was doing with them and suffering from selective mutism I really didn’t have any explanation. Perhaps I might have croaked out the word balloons but I don’t think I did. Upshot was I was given the book “Now Molly Knows” to read. I don’t recall much about the book except the last line being “now Molly knows,” and my wondering wtf she knew as it was not spelled out. Something about her wedding night. But nothing graphic and not having a clue I still didn’t have a clue. Looking it up on Wikipedia I see the book was meant as a lesson to young women to save themselves for marriage. Well that totally went over my head as did the rumor that was evidently started by my older sister that I was having sex in 4th grade. I never even associated the book assignment with the condom discovery until learning of this 50+ year old fake news rumor.
This little story was used to slut shame me for the next 50 years. And like you (I hope) I am mainly shocked that people could have thought I was a slut instead of someone being taken advantage of at the ripe old age of 9. Desperately searching for Lolita, seems certain people always are.
It does make me rethink the whole NASA conspiracy of faking the moon landing. The best argument against that I always thought was that no one could keep it a secret but here this fake news slander secret about me was kept from me for over 50 years. For the “true” story of the NASA —Kubrick (not Kubrick) connection, watch “Fly Me To The Moon” with Scarlett Johansson— truly a wonderful film. It also features Channing Tatum, a Colin Jost cameo and the sweetie pie from Everyone Loves Raymond. 💕
Any stories related to the poll will be considered appreciated commentary. A family friend demonstrated to me and my siblings with Barbie & Ken dolls when I was in 2nd grade. She was a few years older than us. She just waved them wildly together over her head. I kind of got the point that it involved male and female touching somehow but still didn’t understand the mechanics or whether midair acrobatics were required. It certainly seemed more likely than the old cabbage patch stork delivery system story my mom tried to use to cover up the Barbie & Ken intel. In any case, I didn’t tie it together with the whole “condoms in my drawer” brouhaha until years later. And despite hours spent pouring over our Health Book and its puberty graphic and even its detailed explanation of intercourse, in 6th grade, I didn’t figure out the facts of life until some years later in junior high when the daughter of a cultivator of Lolita’s showed us her parents’ porn stash.
Rereading the Health Book as an adult it seems simple enough, but it has very small print and uses elevated medical language. Given my reading tracking disorder, it seems I didn’t put the intel in column a together with the intel in column c, and forgetting column a while reading the intervening column b, kept me in the dark as to the 3-D implications of the text.
Solutions or guesses to the Photo riddle will also be appreciated.
