shul seat stealer

It seems like all I ever write about these days is my time spent in synagogue. I'm not sure what that means. In any event, I will now record a completely true and somewhat disturbing incident that occured right before my very eyes this past shabbos.

I was in western hempstead, and decided to attend the "teen" minyan, b/c the "young adult" minayn did not meet this week. I'm not sure when I'm gonna have to start going to the old adult minyan...i wonder what the cut-off is. I say that under 30, you can still go to young adult minyan, but over 30 you should never be seen there. In addition, if you are bald or have grey hair, you should go to the regular adult minyan. I would make some type of married-rule and say that all married people should go to a regular adult minyan, but it seems that people like to get married as young adults these days, and thus belong in the "young adult" minyan. Then again, if you don't live in west hempstead, you probably don't have any clue what the hell I am talking about and you can just pretend you didn't read this whole paragraph.

Anyway, sometimes there are strange adults that sneak their way into these younger-generation minyans. I'm really not sure what these guys are doing here. The "leader/founder" of the minyan is an older fellow and he belongs. Same goes for parents that are drifting in to hear their kids leign and s like that. U know...to "shep nachas". But there are also alot of parents who come by to spy on their kids and make sure they r in the minyan. Those parents annoy me. I am going to start coming to their minyan and spying on them and make sure they are davening properly and what not. I'm also gonna come to their office and spy on them and make sure they r doing their jobs. But even worse than these parents, are the parents that come to the minyan with their kids and sit with them the entire time. This has to be torture for the kids. I think the whole point of these minyans is to give the kids some freedom and time to develop their own davening feelings and skills. Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about and I don't really know what the point of these minyans are. If anyone does, please tell me. The point is that the parents that come to the minyans with their kids are annoying to their own children, and more importantly, to me.

And this weekend in particular was dificult. I got up from my seat to tell my friend yoni wiesel what happened in every MLB boxscore that I had read at home. Naturally, on shabbos, no matter how late I wake up, I still go through every box score in the paper 900 times so that I can be even later to shul. Now then, telling all the boxscore details to yoni during torah reading can be quite a long process b/c you can only say them in between aliyahs, and that is a minimal window of time. So I must have been standing next to him for about 2 aliyahs, when I large balding man decided to take my seat. This is bad b/c he clearly saw me sitting there 6 minutes ago, and he clearly saw me standing in the back discussing important baseball pitches, like chris capuano's increasing # of quality starts. It would be one thing (a misdemeanor) if he would have stolen my seat while I went to the bathroom. It is a completely different thing (a felony, for which hot malten lead should be poured down his fat throat) to steal my seat right in front of me. And to top it all off, it was an aisle seat.

The guy spent the rest of davening harrasing his own children and ruining their day. I was angry for a few hours about this, but now I realize that his children probably hate him, so that is enough punishment.

Happy Father's Day you seat stealer.