Can gentiles not feel wet?

I grew up near Pikesville, and I wonder if you're old enough to remember Cohen's Coddies from Colonial Pharmacy and Suburban Club Almond Smash. Two of the world's great lost edibles.
Marsha
http://www.publicradioquest.com/audio/user/1231

Got a kick out of your story. I have extended family in Pikesville. I'm from Memphis, TN, now living in Tampa Bay area, FL. Where I grew up was largely southern Baptist, particularly my public school, and where I am now does not have a large Jewish population (like other areas of the state). I've always perceived myself as different, not fitting in -- so have had a precise opposite life exerience as you.

I defined myself as an "outsider" -- learning to believe in myself and not take it personally when everybody around me was telling me I would burn in hell. When I first visited relatives in Baltimore (my father's family) when I was ten, it was such a bizarre experience being around a very large very Yiddishkeit family submerged in a world where everybody was just like them. I enjoyed it -- but felt like an outsider there too!

The strangest experience I ever had as a Jew was visiting Israel for the first time in 1980. Everybody was like me. EVERYbody. I had never imagined a world in which everyone had the same (essentially) belief system and customs. I remember, in Jerusalem, clearly thinking to myself ... this is what it feels like to be white! I had never considered it previously, what it was like to be the majority everywhere you go and to have everybody around you look and think like yourself. Since I perceived myself never fitting in, I had not considered that I was white like virtually everybody else and I actually was the majority! But as I was surrounded by thousands of people who looked and acted just like me by way of our same faith, it occurred to me that this was actually the feeling of being white ... living in a world in which I actually am like everybody else and so taking it for granted that I didn't even realize it. In that instant, it was possible for me to experience both whiteness and blackness -- being exactly like everybody else (in that moment as a Jew) and not being like anybody else (in the world at large where everybody is Christian). I'll never forget the feeling.

Good luck with your entry ... - Joy
http://publicradioquest.com/node/800
http://www.joyfulnoise.net

I grew up Catholic and thought everyone else was Catholic, too. Neat observations.

You obviously live an examined life... thanks for this tid bit.

And thanks to Nurmi for sending me directly to you.

Steve

Ultimately the paradoxes of life make fools of us all. So if we would be wise we should study life's paradoxes and confront our abject foolishness head on.

when I was little, I also used to think that the whole world was Jewish... then I realized I was living in a place of which I was one of only Jews in town. great concept by the way.

Most WASPs don't, I think. Wouldn't be polite. But I'm a Finn. We invented sauna, you know. Only Finnish word known and understood the world round. So let me tell you we know from wet. Schvitzing doesn't even BEGIN to describe the Finnish Experience. Oi!

You gave me a good laugh. Loved the story. Good job! Good luck!

*n*

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about" - Oscar Wilde