“Oh,” Sandy said, finding me standing there, dazed. “You heard then.” The door slammed shut again. A few seconds later, Nadia was in the hall looking none too pleased. But all she said was, “Darn,” and went back into her room. After recovering my wits, I made a quick trip to the bathroom to reestablish some vital circulation and to wet my pajama bottoms in the appropriate spot. Then I went back to my room and pretended it was all too awesome to talk about. My friends were impressed by my composure and lack of need to brag, but they were distracted anyway by Cory’s on-going (and shamelessly embellished) description of the sexy dance Olivia had done for him in her string bikini. They didn’t even remember I’d gone AWOL for a while. No further summons were issued from Olivia’s room, but Jake claimed he wasn’t going to do it anyway. “Then why’d I have to suplex you?” Cory challenged. “Temporary insanity,” Jake replied. “Why window shop when I can get the keys to the store?” “True,” we all had to admit. He’d just dumped his girlfriend a few days earlier, but we knew he’d get another soon enough. And so that was that. The evening was over. Unprecedented as it was, I hoped we’d all forget about it as soon as possible. It seemed we all felt similarly because it would be years before any of us ever mentioned it again. The reason my Bar Mitzvah did not take place the following morning was that Myna, my grandmother, made a guest appearance at my Hebrew School class. That catastrophe happened a few months earlier, in December of 1982. It all started with the annual attempt my Hebrew School teachers made to get my grandfather, Leon, to come talk about his experiences hiding from the Nazis. I only knew the general
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