Jewish History In Three Eras

1. Ancient Egypt
Jews were slaves in Ancient Egypt. They were responsible for making giant bricks out of clay in the scorching hot sun and schlepping them around so that King Pharoah could put together cities like Pitom and Ramses and also build giant pyramids. The Pharoahs had all kinds of bad qualities but two that they are known for are: (a) making everyone work in the blazing desert including tiny babies and dear old grandmas, and (b) forcing the Jews to be taskmasters over each other. This means that one Jew had to supervise another Jewish group of workers even if it included his former hairdresser, accountant and sundial repair person. If the supervisor let anyone get away with anything, he was beaten even harder. The taskmasters learned right quick that they'd better listen up because they were not going to be able to escape the desert with a couple of broken kneecaps. This is widely known as very mean because not only did everyone have to work super hard, but they were expected to turn on each other. Ugly.

2. Holocaust
The Nazis had a lot to manage between the ghettos, the unethical science experiments and the death camps. Therefore, it only stands to reason that they would enlist the help of some imprisoned Jews to supervise the other Jews and make sure they didn't step out of line. This included all kinds of brutal jobs that I don't want to repeat here because I don't want you to have nightmares like I did when I learned about this in Grade Four, the point being is that skeletal Jews were hand-plucked from the lines to supervise other even more skeletal Jews and make sure they dug graves correctly etc. The supervisors may have received some perks for their work, such as extra broth, which makes matters even worse because their loyalty was called into question when they had no choice but to obey the Third Reich lest they be thrown into the mass graves themselves. The list of Nazi atrocities is so long that I can see why we had to start learning about it in Fourth Grade, decades later and I'm still not done. But. I do know that one of the worst things they did was force Jews to force other Jews to labor camps and worse. Unforgivable.

3. Last Tuesday
We have been on this tangent to remove Wi-Fi from our house during the day to discourage loafing around, but more importantly to encourage all family members to leave the house and be productive members of society. This started with me carrying the router in my purse all day until I broke it it mysteriously stopped working. I know there's an app to regulate WiFi, but my theory is if there's an app to supervise kids, there's an app to outsmart the parents (calculator, I'm looking at you) so my next step was to take the yellow wire with me everywhere. I get to work and realize that I forgot the wire at home. If I call now, I can catch 17 year old G before he leaves for class and ask him to remove the wire and hide it in my extensive yarn collection before his brother wakes up.

Oh.