Thank you all for coming. From the table settings and other decorations, I’m sure you were able to ascertain the theme of my Bar Mitzvah, which is “Lying awake at night, your face slick with sweat, drowning in a pool of your own despair.” It was either that or “Major League Baseball.”
Today I am a man. But that’s not exactly true, is it? If I really WAS a man, I would be able to abandon my suffocating parents and strike out on my own. They tell you that you are finally a man, which fills you with joy. Then that joy is taken into a dark alley and stabbed to death by the harsh truths of reality. This is less of a “Bar Mitzvah” and more of a “Giving you false hope… Mitzvah.”
I thank my mother for helping me to reach this momentous day. She obviously loves me, but lately her interrogations have become tiresome. Whenever I take too long in the lavatory, she assumes I am watching pornographic zoetropes. But I am not. I AM CONTEMPLATING THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE, MOTHER!!
What can I say about my father? He is a blunt instrument. But he is MY blunt instrument.
I also want to thank Rabbi Froelich, for teaching me my Bar Mitzvah lessons. The other day when I was in the Rabbi’s study, he briefly turned his head and I placed a cockroach in the candy dish on his desk. Then when he dipped his hand into the dish, the cockroach crawled up his arm and he fainted in shock. It was the happiest moment of my young life. It is possible I have a problem with authority.
Most of my school chums are in this room with me today. Many people think I have trouble making friends. But that is not true. I make friends easily. Like Josef K. I literally MADE him. His body is a miniature skeleton fashioned from pipe-cleaners and clad in a diminutive herringbone suit, which used to belong to one of my sister’s dolls. His head is a matzoh ball. A tiny fedora sits atop his round lumpy head. Whenever I have problems, I turn to Josef K. His blank, featureless face is a comfort to me in dark times. It also reeks of chicken broth.
It is common for children to have imaginary friends. But Josef K. is not imaginary. He is quite real, I assure you. I have even poked him with my index finger, just to make certain. He may not be imbued with life, but he IS tangible. And, most likely, delicious.
There is a small ziggurat of gifts piled up near the buffet table. Look upon this pile of gifts. Material possessions! I LOATHE material possessions. Their purpose is to distract us from the meaninglessness of life. They are failures in that regard. Free will is an illusion. We are all slaves to the whims of random chance. That said, I wish I had gotten a pony.
Would it have killed ONE of you people to have bought me a fucking pony?
I would have named him Sheldon Ginsburg. He would have been beautiful. Even simply imagining my beautiful pony Sheldon Ginsburg makes me weep. I weep tears for a world that never was. A world that could welcome and appreciate a magnificent steed such as Sheldon Ginsburg. Sheldon Ginsburg was too beautiful for this world. This world is too wretched for him. He would have surely been turned into glue within a fortnight.
I suppose I shall have to make do with my pet rodent, Goulash. When my parents first bought me Goulash, they told me he was a dog. A SMALL dog. That is what they said. That is the lie they chose to inflict upon me. Then the feral vermin BIT me and, “Oh yes, didn’t we tell you, Franz? Goulash is actually a rat.”
What a wacky surprise.
I would say I look back on that incident and smile, but that particular facial expression is beyond me.
In closing, it is customary in a Bar Mitzvah speech such as this to recount and analyze a reading from the Torah. In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Abraham to slaughter his son Isaac. Because God is uncaring and cruel. Then God says, “JK, LMFAO!” Because God is uncaring and cruel. Do you see a recurring theme here?
I suppose if there’s one silver lining to that story, it’s an incredibly accurate account of the brutality parents are willing to inflict upon their children. DO YOU HEAR THAT, MOM AND DAD? DO YOU??
Dessert will be served in the multi-purpose room.