Open Dialog #1: Camping

Nadia: I once went camping, or rather, I thought I went camping, but it was just Boise.

Sofia:  Boise is the proverbial desert for Jews.  Or so I assume, I've never been west of Jersey.

Nadia: My grandson was graduating from school there – he could have done better in school

Sofia:  Oy.  A degree from a school in Idaho?

Nadia:  Ach, I know.  The pain it causes me.  Every day I tell him, "All of those nice schools and you go into the non-profit world in Idaho?"

Sofia: My heart breaks for you.  It does. He could have been a doctor.

Nadia:  Or at the very least an engineer.  But non-profit? It would have broken had you seen the "graduation party" the family threw.  As if we acknowledge this as an accomplishment?

Sofia:  People threw a party for this?

Nadia: In a field. By a barn, or some such structure people in the west have for.......oh I don't even know.  They had a potluck.

Sofia: How can you serve lox outside?

Nadia: Tabbouleh is not meant to be served at room temperature!  The entire thing was a disaster.  A disaster I tell you.  I sat on a chair in the middle of a field.

Sofia: We used to sit on chairs in fields, in the shtetl.  Then Stalin burned all our chairs. And the field.

Nadia: We use chairs for dining tables, in nice houses in the good part of Beirut.  With our good china. Like civilized people. For this we left the old country?  To sit in fields and drink from plastic cups?

Sofia:  Plastic cups are for children's birthdays, and mid-western Catholics.

Nadia: We agree on this. I sat on a chair, in a barn, and drank from a plastic cup, at the graduation of my Grandson from a school in Boise, with a degree in non-profit.  It was the second worst day of my life, the first being fleeing the home country, of course.

Sofia:  Oh of course.