My Nerves Are Gonna Snappele

So, it's a bit of an anti-climax a week and a half later, but here is a little video from Jarrah's last-day-of-school Shalom Program. The little blonde cutie introducing the song is Jarrah's friend, Jacqueline. (Robyn, I am so bummed you can't see Jared at all in this video! I guess we were too close!)

The song is called "Oy, Mein Keppele," which is Yiddish for "Oh, My Head." It's a litany of aching body parts. This is the kind of thing my people find hilarious. You can hear me cracking up at the line "Oy, mein pippikul/I mean, this isn't typical!" (Pippikul is belly-button.)

Jarrah's class (16 of them) actually sang over 18 minutes of material that day, but this little video clocks in around three, to accommodate your busy lifestyle. The other songs were alternately funny and heart-breaking, too, but this is a good sample.

Jarrah got a lot of compliments on her polka-dot dress, but her mommy scores no points for the brainy decision to go with a headband that day--the child can't keep her hair out of her eyes for all the fruit leather in the world unless it's firmly anchored with pony tails. I kicked myself noting that all the little girls with a similar propensity for wild hair had been brushed and pinned into submission for the big day.

While Jarrah was a paragon of beauty pageant-like smiles and poses for her theater debut a few weeks ago, she suddenly became Miss Twitchy for this performance. The nose-rubbing and eye-blinking are minimal in this number, but they were on full display the rest of the time. I had to smile at the irony--I've been envisioning the perfection of this moment for three years, and when it finally came, she looked like someone had just tossed some pepper in her direction. Which is just how life is, right, Readers? With the surprises.

I did so much crying, I was completely dazed afterward and grateful I had written a letter to each of Jarrah's teachers from the past four years. Grateful because I had gone completely mute and was only able to thrust the envelope into their hands and wordlessly hug them. Then I needed a handful of Advil. Oy, mein keppele.