Off-Topic

This past Sunday, after visiting my Bubby (Yiddish for grandmother) on the Lower East Side, my family decided to check out Governor's Island. We had a great afternoon picnicking near Fort Jay and enjoying the spectacular views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan. But what I wanted to write about was our experience on the City of Dreams Mini Golf Course on the Island. Each hole is designed by a different artist or group of artists. Despite what the website claims, some of the holes are quite frustrating but they are all fun.

Anyway, for those of you that don't already know, I am an observant Jew. Other than when I'm at work and other social situations, I usually wear a kippah/yarmulke on my head. The reason I bring this up is that there was at least one, most likely 2 or 3  observant Jewish families playing mini-golf ahead of us. I'm not sure if it was one family or more than one but there were a lot of children with their mothers. Let me just say that these children were not the best behaved. My family would be playing a hole and some of the children would drop their ball and play right in front of us as if we weren't there. The children were swinging the putters like baseball bats on these works of art. The next thing I know, I hear one of the older children yell "Ema (Hebrew for Mom), [insert child's name] broke the hole!" I think the jaws of everyone near by dropped at the same time. So what did the mother of the child do? Rather than disciplining him, she said "don't worry about it. Let's continue playing and someone will fix it." I was appalled. If that were my child, I would have taken her off the course, given her a good talking to, and taken her home right away.

As a member of the same "tribe" I couldn't help but feel somewhat embarrassed by what happened. Unfortunately, there are still people in the world who think that because I'm "one of them" that we behave the same way. My daughter isn't always the best behaved, but she understands not to disrespect other people's (public or private) property.

The whole situation left a very bad taste in my mouth.  I could go on and on but I won't.