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2001-10-17 - 6:12 a.m.

WHY ME?

A rabbi (or perhaps he was a rebbe, a leader of Chasidic Jews) once suggested that people should walk around with two slips of paper in their pocket. One slip should say, �For my sake, God created the world.� The other slip should say, �I am nothing but dust.� He thought that people then should pull out one slip of paper or the other according to what was appropriate to the situation. Unfortunately, he never explained how people would know which one was appropriate to the occasion.

Too many of the people with whom I�ve been coming into contact recently seem only to have the slip that says, �For my sake, God created the world.� If they read the paper to me verbatim, it would be annoying enough. Unfortunately, somehow the words have gotten translated so that they suggest that every nuisance in the world, every task in the world, and every bit of bad luck in the world involves them.

�Why is everyone always picking on me?� is becoming the chorus to the verse of my life. My clients ask it, my children ask it, and the students in my Hebrew class ask it. It gets asked when I suggest cleaning rooms or doing homework. It gets asked when I suggest that the reason I have not talked to a particular witness is because a client never mentioned the person to me before. It gets asked when I point out that a failure to practice reading might explain why a student just doesn�t get it . On really bad days, it gets asked when I simply say, �Hello, love.�

I treat the question as the Muzak of my life most of the time. I try to ignore it. I try to pretend I�m somewhere else. I try to pretend it�s something else. I do whatever works to keep me from strangling the offender, short of sticking my fingers in my ears and humming.

Someone should warn them that one should never ask questions one does not want the answer to. One of these days, I�m going to slip and give an answer. Things will get ugly then.

I just don�t understand the attitude. Why does all this whining always happen to me?

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