A Parent's Advice

 The English Version

I don't hold with bilingualism. English was good enough for Jesus Christ.
  - Ralph Melnyk

If God wanted you to read
the Ten Commandments
in Spanish, father said, don't
you think He would have written
them in that language? Then why
are you studying a foreign language?
He chose to write them in English,
according to Hollywood, and they're
never wrong about matters like this.
The film companies have big lawyers
representing them. They don't make
a move without getting advice first
from their lawyers. Jesus Christ also
speaks in English. In the old days He
used to speak in Latin, but that caused
church goers to stay away. Why pray
to God, if you have to get your prayer
translated first? That involves middlemen.
That's why you should be so happy
you were born a Jew. Because bad
things were said about us as a people
no one wants to be our middleman,
step between us, because
his back will be exposed.


The Future is Nebulous

Why should we do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?
  - Joseph Addison

Why should I care, father said,
for the future? What has the future
done for me, except kept me waiting?
The future is always tomorrow,
and yet it never comes. It's like
the horizon, you never get there.
You can't sneak up on it. I'm
a prisoner of time. Maybe,
I'm being selfish, but I find
if I take care of the present,
then the future takes care of itself.
The future is more yours than mine.
You're younger. Therefore, you
have a better chance of seeing it
at work. By the time the future arrives,
I'll be dead. That's why I hang on
to the past as long as I can. You
see this hat. I've been wearing it
the last twenty years. Will I be
wearing it the next twenty? I
doubt it. I'll probably misplace it.
The mind plays tricks on you.
You think it's operating at
one hundred percent capacity.
But it gets as old as the body.

 

by Hal Sirowitz

in Volume 3 Issue 1 

Buy a Copy

Return to the Online TOC