My relationship with garages has always been complex.
I, like many other Ashkenazis, do not understand anything about the vehicle's interior, do not differentiate between a carburetor, an alternator and a vibrator, and I can be told that the plug detached from the clutch through the handbrake and I will believe.
This is also why I try to work only with mechanics I know.
The first lady's father, on the other hand, understands big things about vehicles, except that when he starts explaining something to me about the intricacies of the engine - I immediately get a headache that reminds me of the migraines I got in physics, math and homework classes and prevented my rusty brain from absorbing every detail.
Regardless, the same grandfather of my daughters celebrated 80 this week, and we held a birthday party for him.
I have some guilt feelings about his birthdays, because 20 years ago, when the guy was a 60-year-old boy, we organized for him and his friends from the paratroopers an evening of singing with us in the yard.
40-30 people came to eat, drink to drink and sing Palmach songs and youth movements into the night, with an accompanying guitarist that I organized.
But sometime around three in the morning, when I felt that their singing was already digging a slick in my head and I was already completely tumble-tumble, I realized it was time to end the Sharhala Sharon celebrations, and since we worked hard for a few days on the preparations I wanted to fold and go to bed.
All the signs I made to the accompanist with the guitar to hint to him that sometimes the celebration was over and it was time to say goodbye, what we also paid him for only two hours, were to no avail, and things did not change even when I started releasing excessive yawns, demonstrably knocking on my watch and making knife marks on my neck.
The guy and his audience just loved every moment, and they are not going to stop singing until tomorrow when the army will take off their uniforms.
At three-thirty, between "the green from the belly and from birth" and "they ride and sing," a policeman came to the house and asked to stop the noise because the neighbors were complaining.
The singing stopped, and naturally the event dissipated and everyone went home.
• • •
The first lady, who at this point too was no longer on her feet, wondered in my ears while washing the dishes and tidying up the house, which of our neighbors, in my opinion, had complained about the noise to the police.
Because like many men I am a little scared of my wife, I revealed to her that this anonymous and heartless neighbor is me, who in order to evict the singing warriors from the house called the police anonymously and complained that someone was making noise in the neighborhood.
Of course I did not tell my diary that the focus of the noise was in my house, and that one of the main noises was my beloved in-laws.
It has been 20 years since then, but some of my guilt feelings have remained, and together with them we have started producing the 80th birthday, which was planned to take place in a sheltered housing home in Gedera, where my wife's parents live.
We took over the organization and ordering the food, the first lady's brother organized a beautiful presentation with pictures of all the family and friends, and at the request of the happy groom, who loves opera to his fingertips, it was decided that in the artistic part an opera singer would sing some pieces he liked.
We asked him to choose five passages, but since this is a neat man who does not know how to overlap, he submitted to us a list of ten passages, including link passages and explanations, where the passage was written, in what year, by whom - and why he likes it.
We passed the list to the opera singer, and she in return passed on a list of technical requirements that were met by carefully.
On my birthday morning my wife and I left the house to organize the event.
The plan was to order some borax trays from a well-known store, purchase flowers to decorate the birthday, buy balloons and collect the birthday cake.
We hoped to finish with the whole thing within an hour and a half, get back to our other affairs and head out towards Gedera at five in the afternoon.
• • •
Since a naughty mouse had recently been spotted at the entrance to our house, which frightened the girls of the house, I set a trap for it.
As I walked out the door towards the car I saw that the trap was moving uncomfortably.
A brief check revealed that the guy did not resist the temptation and paid for his weakness for cheese and chocolate.
This is already the second mouse caught this week, and since I heard that the proper and human way to say goodbye to mice is to release them in some open field, I took the trap with the gray captive in it and put it in the trunk of the car with the thought of releasing the hitchhiker on the way.
We finished our business at the borax shop and made our way to the next stop, to buy a cake.
At the traffic light I heard an annoying beep from the car behind me.
After making sure the beep was meant for me, that I did not fall asleep at the traffic light, that I did not have an open door or that the mouse did not escape from the trunk and climbed onto the roof, I noticed that the beeping driver was making large movements with his hands.
I decided to stop on the side to figure out what the problem was, and indeed the guy was not lazy, opened the window and said to me, "Dude, if you did not notice, you have a lot of smoke coming out of the hood."
Luckily, I was really close to the "Liron Garage", which I usually visit whenever I have a problem with the car.
We entered the garage smoked, and I asked my situation and Moshe to look at what was happening.
The guys told me that I had arrived at the very last minute and that in another ten minutes there would have been irreversible damage to my engine and my passerby.
"Leave the car, and we'll let you know what the problem is."
We left the car and headed out towards the patisserie, and a few steps later I remembered.
I went back to the garage and said to Moshe: "Listen, there's another little thing I need from you. I have a mouse in the trunk."
Moshe, who in his many years in the profession has already encountered a variety of problems of various kinds, but a mouse in the trunk has never been one of them, looked at me with a look reserved for particularly delusional customers, and asked: "What ?! A mouse ?!"
"Yes", I replied, explaining that he was caught this morning in a trap and I was going to release him in some field, the ones then the car's engine turned on the BBQ and I deviated from my tracks and got in here.
"So that the lovable ratatouille will not suffer, so if you can," I asked, "release him later."
Moshe looked at me to make sure I was not kidding him, and after coming to the conclusion that I was just a strange person, he said he would try and we said goodbye.
In the afternoon the car was repaired and I picked it up from the garage.
They did not have time to release the mouse, but it seemed vital and vigorous in the trap, so perhaps they let him drink black coffee with them.
I ventilated his luggage with ten minutes of fresh air.
Since we were already late, we drove immediately towards Gedera, and just before entering the sheltered housing complex, when I remembered that Mickey Mouse was still with us, I got out of the car and released him.
The event was lovely, the food was delicious, and the guests were thrilled with the birthday groom.
This time, even though in the peak moments of the opera singer the soprano stabbed my eardrum like the scissors of the book from Seville, I did not call the police.
The event seemed like a success, and I felt I was able to atone for my ill-fated 60th birthday.
But then loud cries were heard from the lobby of the nursing home.
When I asked the receptionist to explain the shouting, he said that one of the occupants saw a mouse crossing the lobby.
"Probably no cats are kept here," I said without batting an eyelid, as if I understood the field.
"If you want to trap them in a trap, in my experience, they like chocolate and cheese. If you want, I happen to have a trap in the trunk."
yairn@israelhayom.co.il
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