How to ruin a favor (or maybe not).
Let me just start by saying that tonight I will turn 24 years of age. I know this because facebook says so. I will be celebrating this birthday by studying for a midterm in securities regulations. If anyone wants to join in on this festive celebration, please let me know. In all seriousness, birthdays defintely have lost the excitement they used to have. 21 was a big celebration, b/c of the legal drinking and all. 22 was also good for some reason, and 23 wasn't bad. For whatever reason I'm just not feeling it anymore. Perhaps it is b/c of a song that "mom" reminded me of today, which I have probably listened to over 500 times during my life so far. That song is "Old Man" by Neil Young, and it is depressing s. It mentions the age of 24, and if you are so inclined to be in a state of depressing s, i urge you to view the lyrics.
And that is enough of that. Something I always had a hard time doing for other people is this strange thing called "Favors". I'm not talking about when people ask me to do something completely unreasonable; I'm talking about a simple favor- like if you are driving by here, can u pick me up or something. By the way, me and my former roomate ("eric") used to come up with all types of characters as if we were about to write a sketch comedy show and perform it in our apartment. (we did make some small videos, to be viewed by special request). Anyway, one of these characters was "Unreasonable Favor man" - a character that always asked you to do the most unreasonable and inconveniant favors. I definetly have a problem doing unreasonable favors, and when people ask them from me I think that is absurd. But I also had a problem with regular favors.
I decided with the new year rolling around and all that, I should try and work on this and kicked things off with a major favor operation. My former chavrusah who may or may not be named Uri Burger runs a little "4 species business" in his spare time, and sells the species to UPenn. He knew I was driving from NY to Penn and asked if i could bring down the 80 or so species multiplied by 4. Now then, one might even classify this as a manifestation of "unreasonable favor man", but even then- I was willing to do this favor. This all sounds like a major step for a self centered shmuck like myself, but I will now explain how I proceeded to ruin or "federize" this favor.
I Federized the favor in two distinct ways. Uri offered to let me take a set of species for my own use as a reward for doing him this favor. First of all, this might ruin the favor right here. If one is receiving a reward for doing a favor, does that remove the status of favor. Perhaps a small reward really doesn't... but I kind of turned it into a big reward. In the store, I told the people that Uri said I can take an esrog of my own, and asked them where the most expensive esrogim were. I then grabbed a 70 dollar esrog and said "in your face esrog workers of uri". So now I had abused the reward system of this particular favor and perhaps tarnished it completely.
By the way, you might be thinking that this is halachically problematic, b/c I was given my esrog as a gift and it is not really my own esrog. You might be right or you might not be right, but this is not the place for this discussion. But if you were thinking of the Halachic ramifications of this long winded story, good job by you.
The second way in which i "federized" this favor was upon arrival at the Upenn. I found a great parking spot near my house, which is no easy task. As many of my readers know, finding a great parking spot is perhaps the best feeling in olam ha'zeh. Anyway, the delivery spot for all these species was 3 blocks away at the Hillel, but there was no way I was leaving this spot and driving to the Hillel. The result of all this was that 3 guys had to walk from the Hillel to my car and carry all the species through the dangerous streets. And all of this was on erev yom kippur, so these guys were probably busy. But I was busy too- watching Sunday NFL football, and that was no time to complete the favor in the right way. So I watched these 3 pious guys struggle with the boxes of species, and wondered if the Jets would indeed finish the job against the Colts that day. Sure enough they couldnt, just as I couldn't complete the favor.
And that is enough of that. Something I always had a hard time doing for other people is this strange thing called "Favors". I'm not talking about when people ask me to do something completely unreasonable; I'm talking about a simple favor- like if you are driving by here, can u pick me up or something. By the way, me and my former roomate ("eric") used to come up with all types of characters as if we were about to write a sketch comedy show and perform it in our apartment. (we did make some small videos, to be viewed by special request). Anyway, one of these characters was "Unreasonable Favor man" - a character that always asked you to do the most unreasonable and inconveniant favors. I definetly have a problem doing unreasonable favors, and when people ask them from me I think that is absurd. But I also had a problem with regular favors.
I decided with the new year rolling around and all that, I should try and work on this and kicked things off with a major favor operation. My former chavrusah who may or may not be named Uri Burger runs a little "4 species business" in his spare time, and sells the species to UPenn. He knew I was driving from NY to Penn and asked if i could bring down the 80 or so species multiplied by 4. Now then, one might even classify this as a manifestation of "unreasonable favor man", but even then- I was willing to do this favor. This all sounds like a major step for a self centered shmuck like myself, but I will now explain how I proceeded to ruin or "federize" this favor.
I Federized the favor in two distinct ways. Uri offered to let me take a set of species for my own use as a reward for doing him this favor. First of all, this might ruin the favor right here. If one is receiving a reward for doing a favor, does that remove the status of favor. Perhaps a small reward really doesn't... but I kind of turned it into a big reward. In the store, I told the people that Uri said I can take an esrog of my own, and asked them where the most expensive esrogim were. I then grabbed a 70 dollar esrog and said "in your face esrog workers of uri". So now I had abused the reward system of this particular favor and perhaps tarnished it completely.
By the way, you might be thinking that this is halachically problematic, b/c I was given my esrog as a gift and it is not really my own esrog. You might be right or you might not be right, but this is not the place for this discussion. But if you were thinking of the Halachic ramifications of this long winded story, good job by you.
The second way in which i "federized" this favor was upon arrival at the Upenn. I found a great parking spot near my house, which is no easy task. As many of my readers know, finding a great parking spot is perhaps the best feeling in olam ha'zeh. Anyway, the delivery spot for all these species was 3 blocks away at the Hillel, but there was no way I was leaving this spot and driving to the Hillel. The result of all this was that 3 guys had to walk from the Hillel to my car and carry all the species through the dangerous streets. And all of this was on erev yom kippur, so these guys were probably busy. But I was busy too- watching Sunday NFL football, and that was no time to complete the favor in the right way. So I watched these 3 pious guys struggle with the boxes of species, and wondered if the Jets would indeed finish the job against the Colts that day. Sure enough they couldnt, just as I couldn't complete the favor.
posted by The Fades @ 8:37 AM
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