O Canada - The Jewish Standard

Hello there! Let me set the scene for you. It is a sunny Thursday afternoon. It is July Fourth — the birthday of America.

I never really understood how July Fourth became the official birthday of our country. I am assuming it was the culmination of some sort of war. Unfortunately, the person who I am driving with, husband #1, is equally as bright as I am, and neither of us have an answer to this question. We cannot even google it because we are in the middle of the Adirondacks and there is no cell reception. So what happens when two adults who have known each other for more than 30 years, have been married for almost 24 of them, share the parental responsibility for three adult-aged sons (adult only in age, not in any other respect, unfortunately), get stuck in a car driving to Canada with no cell phone reception? I will tell you. You play the “Did I ever tell you this story” game.

A fun fact about husband #1 — one of his fingers was accidentally amputated by a barbell in the basement of someone’s house in Monsey. This person whose barbell it was lives in Teaneck, but I am not sure if he reads my column. He has many family members who live in Teaneck, so hopefully one of them will pass this column onto him. Normally, your reaction would be, “Yuck, how did that happen? What happened to his finger?” He didn’t tell me this story until we had been married for a few years, and my reaction to this story was, “How are we married and I never heard this story before?” (I did think it was odd that he waited to tell me this story, as it is kind of a traumatic thing to happen to a kid. Did he think it might ruin the shidduch if I knew his finger had been stitched back together?) So, yes, husband #1 was working out with barbells (not working out, but it sounds better than, “I was lifting it up to see how heavy it was,” which is an actual quote). He dropped the barbell, somehow it landed on his finger and the top portion flew off and landed across the room (also true).

According to husband #1, he went upstairs, sans finger, to tell the mother that he had a problem, as he was missing the top portion of his finger. She went downstairs and found the piece of finger and took husband #1 to the hospital, where they were able to successfully reattach it. Now this is a great date story, so I am not sure why I heard it for the first time at a Shabbes table at my parents’ house. But that is neither here nor there.

So we are in the car now, driving to Montreal for a wedding, and we are playing this game. Husband #1 and I know each other pretty well, as most married couples do, so it is really good to know that after all of these years of being together, of going through life-altering events, good times, bad times, that he still has the ability to make me laugh so hard that I almost pee in my pants. (Almost, not almost, I am a woman of a certain age, so anything is possible.)

Of course this story involved him driving away with the bumper of another car attached to the front of his car, and all of these years later, he cannot figure out how he pulled that off without actually hitting said car, and I cannot stop laughing because I can totally see him doing this, seeing his sons do this, and not have any idea how it happened. Now, none of you probably think this is funny, but I am the one stuck in the car, so just use your imagination.

Why are we driving to Montreal instead of flying? Well, for sure, some of you can figure it out. Driving to Canada doesn’t faze us, because for seven summers we drove to a lot of places that were even farther away than Montreal. This road trip is like a trip to New York City for us. The only difference is that we don’t have our three adorable monkeys in the back seat. The only one who is asking annoying questions and needs to stop for snacks or the bathroom is husband #1. And that is OK, because it is just going to be the two us for, God willing, for a very long, long time.

Hope you all had an enjoyable holiday weekend!

Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck enjoyed her stay in Canada, our favorite neighbor to the north. And that is the extent of her geographical knowledge.