Rob S. Friedman
August 2023
Now I Understand, in Three Ronkas
My fifth grade teacher laughed when correcting me that ‘decrepit’ isn’t a Yiddish word. What I learned from that embarrassing experience is the greater value in dictionaries than my grandmother spitting out phlegm filled syllables.
What I learned from my little sister is that being funny can be endearing. My big sister never learned that lesson. She did figure out how to disappoint her chuckling parents by making that obvious.
From my father, right arms figure significantly in the Newtonian Law of Automobile Deceleration. From my mother, the definition of love: lifting her grandchildren with arms draped in bath towels, hugging them from the tub.
Rob S. Friedman 