We used to have our next-door neighbors, Yan and Olga, over for dinner and cards. Yan and I would always drink a little too much, as he never failed to produce some obscure, delicious bottle of something – either vodka or some aperitif I’d never heard of – and we’d get pleasantly buzzed, as our wives chatted. We would all commiserate about parenthood and how fucking hard it is, and it was a wonderful comfort to find someone who could share our struggles.
They had such a fun, funny dynamic during these conversations about our families. Olga’s tone would start to shift, and her comments would turn towards the negative, all for comic effect, of course, until she’d say something purposely extreme. Yan, in that quintessentially Jewish way, would raise his eyebrows, shrug and say something like, “Well, I don’t know about that.”
“Yes,” Olga would say, as if closing the book on the subject and reminding her husband that the point, like all points, was true because she said it was. And that was final.
This tickled me and J. and when we couldn’t contain our laughter, Olga would join in, and then Yan. None of us were very good poker players; as I remember it the women were generally better than us men, but our heavy drinking was a built-in excuse, I figure. Olga didn’t generally drink, and J. sipped her red wine beatifically.
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