My Year In Words

As the end of the year approaches, I have begun to think about everything I have done--the good, and the bad. So here it is, everyone: Amram D. Altzman's complete year in one blog entry.
January started off like it always does--school and some snow. Those of us New Yorkers know that we really don't get much snow around here. There was my New Year's party, which I had my best friend, Jacob, and his two brothers sleep over. We played video games, played with our Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, stayed up 'til one in the morning--the typical slumber party.
On March 10th, there was my twelfth birthday. Nothing special there, the important stuff is next year at my Bar Mitzvah. If memory preserves, Jacob slept over, and that was pretty much it. And life continues on.
In June, school ended. This is probably one the higher points of my year. There was nothing but parties, with the exception of an assembly. This took twenty minutes to say that we should be good Jews, where kippot and tzitzit, etc.
Ah, the summer breeze! I am at the library as a volunteer, and this is a summer I will never forget. At this point, I wish to bid all of my fellow Book Buddies a happy Holidays. For more on the fun, fun, fun of the summer see the blog entry entitled "And the Library is Supposed to be.........Quiet?".
And school starts of a school at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, things got back into routine. And I found out that there is school on New Years. My grades are good, as they always are, and today i got an 80 in Lashon, which, by the way, is an insanely good mark for Mrs. Levine.
Now, it is Erev Christmas, and I have just recapped my entire year in a bunch of short paragraphs. Happy Holidays everyone!

Goldilocks and the Tomato Sauce

Goldilocks is a little girl who loves pizza. One fine, summer day, she was making anchovy pizza for lunch when she ran out of tomato sauce. Goldilocks decided she would go to the Bear residence on Ocean Parkway to borrow some tomato sauce. Goldilocks often baby-sat little Baby Bear, and she did not think the Bear family would mind.
She rang the doorbell, but there was no one home. Since Goldilocks was good friends with the Bear family, she decided there would be no harm done if she just snuck in and retrieved some tomato sauce from the kitchen. After all, what are friends for?
Goldilocks went into the kitchen—to the kitchen, where the tomato sauce was, when something her eye—fresh oatmeal! This was Goldilocks’ favorite breakfast, rivaling only cold pizza that she made the night before. She knew Papa and Mama Bear both liked their oatmeal at extreme temperatures, hot and cold respectively, but Baby Bear’s was just perfect in every way.
After eating a whole bowl of oatmeal, Goldilocks got tired. After all, doesn’t hot milk make you tired? Thus, she went upstairs to the bedroom and took a nice late morning nap.
Goldilocks awoke to the angry growl of Papa Bear. They carted her off to court, and sued her for breaking and entering. The judge, Howard M. Taftson, was angry about the recent budget cut, and therefore not in the mood for a prolonged trial, and let Goldilocks off the hook. The Bear family forgave her, and she lived happily ever after.

Torah Study Saved My Life

The last month was a banner month for our family: first a regurgitating toilet in our basement, followed by our fridge breaking down on Thanksgiving, and then the sink in our bathroom breaking. Then, finally, on 12/1/2007, was the worst of them all: my house was broken into. Here, as always, is the story.
It was Saturday night, and we were at a parent-child learning program which is held at my shul (synagogue), where we were--yes, you guessed it--learning Torah. At eight o'clock, when we returned, we found my father's office torn apart, with the contents of the fire-proof box he kept in his office spilled on the floor. In addition to that, my parents bedroom looked like a hurricane just went through it, with clothes strewn across the floor, and my mom's jewelry was missing.
The police were called, and we established that the robbers entered through a window that was displaced, and not broken, then left through a back door in our basement.
Flatly refusing to go to bed from fear, I stayed up until the detective arrived. He looked over the affected areas, found glove prints (so there was no real evidence) and, when touring through my father's office for clues, found a bag filled with most of my mom's jewelry in it.
The life-saving part of the story was that I had planned to stay home by myself and do some writing, but my parents convinced me to go. Instead, I went to study Torah. So yes, Torah study did indeed save my life. From this story, I can assess three things: G-d has a very messed up sense of humor, someone out there, probably also G-d is trying to say "Booga booga," and, hey, you know, sometimes parents are right.
As, always, your comments and aksed of and accepted, as I want to know about my readers' opinions on this.