Grace is going to hell. Or not.

Friday night Marianne and I were at a dinner party in Bushwick - a hispanic neighborhood in Brooklyn where there are a lot of barber shops, pastry shops and street racing. Yeah, there are all these souped-up civics squealing their tires all over the place, it's weird and cool and pretty bad-ass. Anyway, I wore my new shoes (bought a pair of black heels last week), but before I could wear them, I took them to the shoe repair guy to have the hard plastic end of the heel replaced with a softer, rubber end. Anyway, told the man what I wanted, and he said he'd have them done by Monday. I said that Monday was too late, that I had a party to go to tonight, and so I'd need them by five pm that day (friday). He looked at me, smiled and exclaimed, "you're jewish!" - i didn't know if it was a question or a statement, but I knew the right answer was... So I told the 50 year old Jewish man I was Jewish (understanding of course that implicit in his question/statement was the reality that if I wanted the shoes done that day, I had to be Jewish, right? right). He was all excited because there was some kind of holiday/event going on at the synagog that night, and he assumed that that's what I was going to (are you even allowed to wear black leather pumps to the synagog?!?!?!)... So, instead of this little lie clearing everything up, and getting my shoes fixed in time, it created a whole new set of problems. He wanted to know where I was from, so I said Canada, and he said, 'no, no, but where are you FROM?" I had no idea what to say, but again he prompted me, he said, 'are your parents from Israel, Russia, where?' so I said Israel, and I could feel myself getting in WAY over my head... He said something in Hebrew, and I said I don't speak hebrew, and he gave me a look that was kind of like him saying, "what kind of Jew doesn't speak hebrew" (not in an offensive way though; he was just trying to figure it all out, he was trying to convince us both that I was Jewish). Then I had to write down my name - but I was losing my ability to keep up the charade, so instead of being clever and writing Gracie Goldberg or something, I just wrote Grace Hunt - which may be one of the least jewish names out there. So now I had to account not only for the fact that I didn't speak a word of Hebrew, but also that I had a suspiciously WASPy last name, and a very VERY WASPy nose. So I told one small truth, I said my Dad was British-Canadian... Then he said, 'oh, so you're mixed?!' and I said 'yeah, mixed' (??!). He said one more thing in Hebrew, I smiled and just shook my head and asked again what time the shoes would be ready. Totally fearing he'd figured me out and would tell me to come back for my damn non-Jewish shoes on Monday, I couldn't look at him anymore. Luckily, he said come back at 5pm. Phew!! Oh man, I got outta there fast and ran down the street part screaming/laughing/crying at what I'd just done. I ran back to the coffee shop where Marianne and I were studying and I sat down and said, "i'm going to hell". I told her the story and she informed me that Jews don't believe in hell. Thank God.

Um, like, I think so. That's what my one Jewish friend in Calgary told me once.

P.S. She left out the part where we giggled about swearing on Yahweh's grave that she was Jewish. Or Jesus's.