We inherited our refrigerator from the previous owners of our condo. Okay, so it wasn’t the latest and greatest. It didn’t take up one entire wall in our kitchen and couldn’t hold enough food for 15 families. But it was good enough for us.
Recently, I
decided that I wanted to start using the icemaker and dug out the manual that
came along with it. I figured I’d read the booklet while I was at it and
stumbled upon something amazing: My fridge has a Shabbos mode! Well, how do you
like that? I practically jumped for joy. This discovery was like finding money
in the backyard. And all along I thought my old appliance was far from being
state of the art. I thought it didn’t compare to the other new and gleaming
appliances that stood boldly and beautifully in my kitchen. Who knew?
I don’t ever
remember having a well-lit refrigerator. I was used to not being able to
clearly identify the many contents that were contained inside. I kept the light
bulbs unscrewed at all times so I wouldn’t have to remember to unscrew them
before Shabbos. Well, no more. I simply press two buttons simultaneously, and
viola, the readout says “Sb” and I’m good to go. I don’t know what to do with
myself.
I did a practice
run, because of course I didn’t believe the Shabbos mode would really and truly
work. How is it that I just couldn’t believe it, that I didn’t assume there
would be any kind of fancy gizmo on this old model? Funny, my kids would never
think like that. They would be the ones to assume it would be so, and they
certainly would never ever spend even one minute reading the manual. Why, that
would go against their grain of thinking and would be considered an insult to
their intelligence.
I’m reminded of
something that happened at work this week. One of my coworkers who, by the way,
is my daughter’s age, borrowed a game of mine for one of her students. It was
an older game from probably 30 years ago, something I picked up on one of my
thrift store excursions. She was trying to figure out how to play it but didn’t
seem to understand the rules. I peeked around the partition in our shared
office and suggested that perhaps she should read the directions.
“Oh,” she said, “I
didn’t know there were any.” Imagine that. I know that I, along with everyone
else from my generation, would have automatically searched inside the box
without thinking, until the instructions were found. I would have just assumed
they would be there, no question about it.
It’s even funnier
that nowadays manuals and directions have been reduced to a single piece of
paper. I guess the manufacturers figure that no one will take the time to read
something when they’d rather figure it out for themselves. I just don’t get it
at all.
Kids today would
laugh out loud and scratch their heads in dismay if they saw the phone books
that used to be delivered to everyone’s house once upon a time. Remember those
two very thick books, one with white pages and the other with yellow? Oh, how
often we thumbed through them while keeping them in a prominent place to search
for everything from residential phone numbers to carpet cleaners. They were
also handy to use as booster seats for our toddlers when we went visiting.
We were inundated
with manuals, maps, and directions of every kind. I remember the many maps my
father used to keep in his glove compartment. There was one for every location
near and far. It was a ritual of sorts as my father would pour over the map
before a family vacation to figure out the route we would be taking. Once in
the car, my mother became the navigator to alert my father when to turn off one
highway and get onto another.
My mother and I
took a trek across America, which took me to my first job. We followed our
trusty “Triptik,” which unfolded into pages and pages of directions. As the
years rolled by, this cumbersome travel log turned into Mapquest, which was
replaced by Waze.
I guess we can
chalk it all up to progress. From snail mail to email and everything in
between, our society has become used to taking care of business quickly and
with ease. I suppose it would be fair to admit that my life has become
infinitely easier, too. Making chicken soup for example, which is just about
one of the most uncomplicated parts of Shabbos preparation, has become even
simpler. These days, I buy packaged precut carrot and celery sticks at the
grocery store. And instead of lugging my heavy soup pot to and from the stove,
I now use the pot filler faucet behind my stove. Easy peasy.
The conveniences
that I use to prepare food have been such a help in ways I never would have
imagined when my children were younger. Once I discovered net bags to put
chicken bones into, it was like found money in the backyard, an expression my
mother was fond of using when I was younger. Fishing out bones, fat, and
gristle was previously a tedious task, but thanks to this little mesh bag, my
fishing expeditions are officially over.
So, while the new
generation doesn’t know the first thing to do with a typewriter and barely
knows what one looks like, folks from my era are totally confused when visiting
a computer store and can’t name three quarters of what they see, let alone know
what to do with them. But one thing we all have in common is that, no matter
when we were born, there’s nothing like the feeling of found money in the
backyard. It’s that wonderfully pleasant sensation of getting an added bonus
when you least expect it.
Zahava Hochberg
created the weekly column “Musings Through a Bifocal Lens” for the Monsey Mevaser newspaper. Zahava can be
reached at zahava.hochberg17@gmail.com.
