Fear is the motivational factor for doing some real stupid shit, like standing outside in the roaring storm, climbing up avocado trees to harvest them, so that the falling fruit don't damage your car, and offering to help your boyfriend's mother with Shabbat dinner. All three are to be cautioned against, and certainly life threatening. Especially when Edith brings her own set of kosher cooking pots.
Guilt is the ensueing result of your petty indulgences in these fear inducing activities. You feel bad that you could have died standing in your own driveway while power lines swayed crazily back and forth, died falling out of the bough of a gnarled avocado tree, or died while the Edith stood over you, scowling, while you chopped up vegetables in your usual errant California manner. Apparently, it is written somewhere that all Miami Jewish mothers know to peel their cucumbers and cut their white button mushrooms at a 45 degree angle for the maximization of cooking surface area. Oy, the shame, the pain, the horror of it all. But, I am after all a shamless shiksa who doesn't know better, nu?
It is therefore no surprise that shameless shiksa's in the South do things like blend up margaritas for good Jewish sons in the middle of a hurricane to help take their minds of their neurotic mother. I am now, of course, speaking of the particularly Southern brand of alcoholism. It is not the West Coast, well-intentioned, lay out on the beach and grab-- beer-and-a-tan brand of drunkedness, which precedes more productive activities, such as surfing or hooking up with the girl behind the Starbucks counter. Neither is it the East Coast agenda-laden, heavily politiical drinking binge that usually accompanies a Harvard MBA, a juicy filet mignon, a blonde, and an important cigar. No, this is drinking because you are cooped up with a house full of lunatics, drinking because those 140 mph winds have leveled all structures, drinking because the worst of the storm is yet to come, and drinking beacuse, well, the end of the world could come tomorrow, so why not meet your Maker with a grin and a beer?And that, my friends, is the real reason why the South will never rise again.
