Feelin’ Funny: Mordechai Schmutter

There comes a time in every marriage when your wife is going to want to go walking, and you’re going to want to go to sleep.  And that time is Friday night.  What are you gonna do, right? 

When people ask me why I don’t have money, I usually say it’s because I’m a writer and a teacher, and zero times two is still zero.  I’ve always figured that this was Hashem’s way of keeping my material relatable to people of all income levels.  But it’s never occurred to me that the reason I have no money might be because I’ve never bought a lottery ticket. 

I recently sent someone a long email expressing my frustration about something, and his entire response was, “Maybe you should write an article about anger management.”  And it wasn’t even an angry email.  It occurred to me only afterward that it may have come off as angry because I forgot to break it up into paragraphs. 

As frequent readers of my columns may have figured, I don’t really speak a lot of Yiddish.  Or at least I try not to use it as a crutch in my writing.  Like there are some humor writers out there – particularly in the general public – that think that if you pepper in an “Oy vey!” here and there, it’s just as funny as an actual punch line. 

Welcome back to “How Should I Know?” – the column to go to when your father says, “Ask Mommy,” and your mother says, “Ask Tatty.”  That way, when they ask, “Who gave you permission to do this?” you can say, “How Should I Know?”

It’s cold.  That’s all I can think about right now, as I sit in my drafty 80+ year old Passaic house, five feet from my front door. 

As I’m writing this, it is 7 degrees outside, and according to my device, it feels like it’s negative six.