Basya Tsybukmakher
Welcome to a tour on which you will see all seven famous wonders of our home with your own eyes!
The Living Room Collapse—named for the effect the sight of the living room has on an unprepared viewer.
This wonder of our home has a unique nature: like the legendary river Sambatyon, which stopped hurling stones for the duration of Shabbat, the Living Room Collapse disappears before candle lighting… and returns to its territory sometime after the first Shabbat meal is over.
The Pyramid of Unsorted Laundry—for two thousand years now (roughly since last Pesach), it has towered atop the washing machine…
To reach the Pyramid, we must overcome a difficult obstacle: fight our way through the kitchen jungle. This is Terra incognita, where no Responsible Person has ever set foot. (But plenty of feet keep stepping into it incognito: grab something and—scurry-scurry-scurry-scurry…)
Along the way, you can take a peek at another wonder of our home,
the Refrigerator Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is unique in that the family’s constant stream of food mostly passes it by. Moreover, new trophies are regularly carried into the depths of the Mausoleum, but very rarely is anyone carried out. So they lie there, becoming mummified…
We head back, and this time turn toward the children’s room—shining there is the famous
Under-the-Duvet Lighthouse (also known as the as-yet-unseen, under-the-pillow, inside-the-wardrobe, and much more). This Lighthouse lights up the darkness of the long nights for everyone in the children’s room, satisfying their urge to read at night after lights-out. Sometimes the Lighthouse is confiscated at the whim of Higher (in height) Powers, but invariably “finds” its way back after a short while.
Let us continue our tour. The study lies ahead. Here you will encounter two wonders at once: first, the majestic
Statue of Dad Studying Gemara; on the other side of the stone figure, you can enjoy the variety of the
Artifact Warehouse on Mom’s Desk… her work desk, supposedly. The Artifact Warehouse is interesting in that all efforts to sort it out amount to “zero”.
And finally, the highlight of our tour—
The Hanging Babies with a Contented Look—you can see this wonder of the world at any hour of the day or night, right on Mom.
The tour is over,
until we meet again at our Club of Fascinating Household Geography!