Adam Levin - The Instructions

PPS Ruth is standing here, looking over my shoulder, and she just told me that it is dumb to use a PS because the PS was invented before computers which means before you could cut and paste and delete stuff and that people used it because they had to write or type their letters, and once they got them perfect, they didn’t want to have to retype or rewrite them to make room for anything they realized they should have said before they signed their name, so they put what they realized they should have said in the PS, but now there’s no need to do that, so it’s dumb to do it, Ruth says, and I should just cut and paste the PS content (Ruth keeps calling it “the PS content”) into the space above the XOXO Ruth says, which is why I won’t do it, and also why I will type PPS after I finish saying what I’m saying here, which is what I am calling the PPS content, and then cut and paste it into the space right before the first “Ruth” of this paragraph (even though you can already see the “PPS” before the paragraph’s first “Ruth” right now, while I’m writing this, I mean, since there’s only just one skipped line that divides the Ruth from the “suck” that ends the PS) because if you could see how much it is bothering her right now, the way she is biting off the nails of one hand and holding that hand’s elbow with the other hand and getting sweaty because I know how to use and will use cut and paste but still won’t use cut and paste the way she wants me to and how she can’t do anything about what I want to do because I can beat her up so easy even though she’s older than me, you would laugh at Ruth as much as I am laughing at Ruth and you would want to make that last as long as you possibly could.

I wrote her back:

Sent: November 15, 2006, 7:27 PM Central-Standard Time

Subject: RE: THE PLOT THICKENS

From: Gurionforever@yahoo.com (me)

To: jellyjellyjellyjellyjellyjellyjelly@gmail.com (Jelly Rothstein)

Hey Jelly,

You should write to me more often. I love long emails that aren’t in leetspeak, and this one especially because it helped me figure something out. While I was in ISS, I saw this Shover through the window for a second, and I instantly knew he was an Israelite, but I didn’t know how I knew he was an Israelite, and now I’m pretty sure I knew because he was one of those first three to star their scarves = I must have seen the star for a split second and registered what it meant without really registering that it was there

More importantly: There are no degrees of Israelite. You either are one or you’re not. That is how it has always been. You, Jelly Rothstein, ARE one, so nobody in the world is more Israelite than you, and no one ever, in all of history, has been more Israelite than you.

Second: Israelites or not, the Shovers are dickheads because they are Shovers. On top of being dickheads, the Israelite ones are rats because they finked to Brodsky about the Jesusfish back in September. At the same time, the scarves, like you said, are theirs, and no one should be able to stop them from drawing whatever they want on the scarves, so I agree with you on that, but no one HAS stopped them, and no one CAN stop them, just like no one ever forced them to become Shovers. Should the Shovers have kicked them out for drawing the stars on the scarves? Maybe. I’d even say probably. I can’t say for sure because I’m not a Shover, and it’s not up to me to decide what it means to be a Shover (though it clearly means to be a dickhead). If the democratically elected president of the Shovers, shmendrick or not, says that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment — and especially if the vast majority of the Shovers agree with him — then it seems to me that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment, even if the de-Shoverment is hiddenly motivated by antisemitism (which I really don’t think it is, not unless it’s also antisemitic to say that Jews can’t be mullahs or cardinals), or insensitivity, which it might be (but even that’s complicated because the Gentile Shovers could just as easily say — and for all we know actually BELIEVE — that the Israelite Shovers had been insensitive to THEM; that instead of taking into account the Gentile Shovers’ feelings about Frungeon or the Indians or whatever other feelings they feel that led them to think a Jesusfish or blankspot needs to be on their scarves, The Israelites ignored those feelings, insulted those feelings, etc).

The thing is, it isn’t wrong to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. It’s wrong for ISRAELITES to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. And furthermore, it’s neither right nor wrong for Israelites to wear a scarf with a blankspot on it. And Adonai (God) couldn’t care less either way if an Israelite wearing a scarf with a blankspot covers the blankspot with an Israelite religious symbol. He just doesn’t care. So there’s nothing good or noble about those Israelite Shovers starring their scarves, nor is there anything bad or cowardly about them breaking Shover rules — Adonai doesn’t care about Shover rules either.

I’m with you when you say that the Israelite Shovers should have walked out on the rest of them the second it became clear that the rest of them wanted the Jesusfish regardless of what it meant to The Israelites. And I’m also with you on how hard it would be to stop being the friend of someone who betrayed you, and I would say that when a friend betrays you, it is normal, and understandable, and probably even good if your first impulse is to figure out a way to forgive the betrayal.

And probably some Israelite Shovers DID have friends among the Gentile ones, and those who did probably felt betrayed when their friends supported the Jesusfish, but obviously they chose to forgive those friends. And probably those same friends felt betrayed when the Israelites finked to Brodsky, but obviously those friends chose to forgive the Israelites. Except then they each betrayed each other again: the Israelites when they starred their scarves; the Gentiles when they kicked out the Israelites for starring their scarves. Whether or not they should forgive each other again isn’t for anyone to say — there’s no laws about it — but since they are all dickheads, it’s a safe bet that whether they forgive or don’t, it’ll be for dickheaded reasons.

Another safe bet: tomorrow we will see some Jesusfished scarves.

Your friend,

Gurion

PS The PS may have been invented and used for the reasons Ruth said, but either way the content of a PS is an afterthought, so I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t — as it does — look like one. Unless it’s only pretending to be an afterthought, which would make the writer shady, except in certain situations like, for example, at the beginning of Part One, how everyone goes to Don Corleone’s office during his daughter’s wedding bearing gifts and giving blessings, but even Don Corleone knows they’re there to ask a favor, even though the favor gets asked after the gifts and blessings are delivered = If every party knows that every party knows a given pretense is a pretense, then the pretense, even if it’s unnecessary, isn’t offensive.

PPS I think the best idea is to go to the beach and smoke, since I could walk to the train after that if it’s not too cold. We should see how the weather is next Wednesday because I just quit the thing that I usually do on Wednesdays after school, so I’ll have time to kill.

PPPS Sorry if there’re a lot of grammar or spelling errors in this email. My mom’s been yelling for me to come downstairs to eat dinner for the past five minutes, which is distracting.

Having eaten a little too much too fast, my mom and I leaned in opposite directions, against either arm of the three-cushion sofa, one leg apiece stretched over the ottoman, on which plates crusting with hummous and baba specks abutted a napkined basket of pita crumbs. Somebody’d slashed my father’s tires. He’d caught a ride home from his office with a clerk. He entered the family room holding a pastry box ribboned with twine, and my mom and I waved. He set the box down atop the TV. Seinfeld was playing, disc 2, season 4. Kramer made noises, Elaine’s mouth twisted, George’s voice tightened, and Jerry rolled his eyes. My mother and father caught up on their day in voices whose volumes matched the TV’s. Everything was fine, or seemed to be fine, the laughtrack mixing with my parents’ conversation, and I started spacing out, started falling asleep, maybe even fell fully for a second or a minute — and then I snapped to with a hiccup.