From a young age, children develop a fascination with watches. Many a watch is purchased at the dollar store as a prize for young children who are earning their keep. The disadvantage of this purchase is that the watches never work. The advantage, of course, is that the child has no idea how to tell time. The watch, which is worn upside down as often as it is worn right side up, is like a badge of honor. If you ask a kid what time it is, you might get the kind of answer I did when I queried my friend’s three-year-old grandson. Expertly flipping his wrist around, he looked at his watch and said in a worried voice, “It’s 40 cents. I’m late,” and he hurried off. I’m not sure if he was on his way to work or if he just had a play date with the toys in the next room. Either way, time was of the essence.

I recently had the pleasure of engaging in a game that I have not even thought about since I was about eight years old. It is the game of hide-and-seek. Now what most of you don’t realize is that as you get older, you also get better at the game. This basically means that, by now, I could be playing on an Olympic level, as could many of you. However, this is not exactly what happened; let me explain.

My daughter was babysitting for a three-year-old, who, like all three-year-olds, is amazingly cute. While I was standing in the kitchen minding my own business, he ran over to me, careened into my legs, and exclaimed with glee, “I found you.” Not that I knew I was missing, but being a good sport, I turned to him and exclaimed right back, “I found you, too.”

A few months ago, I was reading the newspaper when I came across the headline about an internet security guru, Daniel Kaminsky, who unfortunately passed away at the age of 42. For some reason my curiosity was piqued, so I googled the name to find out more about him. It seems that Mr. Kaminsky was responsible for detecting and identifying weaknesses in computer security to the point that the list of his accomplishments is so impressive that I can’t even understand it. His illustrious career began around the age of four, when he taught himself how to code using a computer that his father bought him from Radio Shack. Unlike many precocious youths, who are happy to fiddle around in the privacy of their own homes, Mr. Kaminsky apparently subscribed to the Star Trek motto, “Where no man has ever gone before.”

In this era of uncertainty, we are faced with challenges that even the most cynical of us could not have possibly predicted. We have changed our behavior regarding everyday activities from shopping to carpooling and from doctor’s appointments to visiting with friends. Our expectations regarding simchas and even small family gatherings have been revamped to the point where questions like, “Was it a Covid wedding” or “Did you zoom with your family?” are not uncommon. Regardless of how well we have adapted, though, there are still things that take us by surprise. We are so hypo-focused on anything that has to do with Covid that we don’t even realize that other aspects of our life, which we took for granted, are being upended without warning. My most recent collision with an ever-changing reality occurred while looking through one of our venerable international frum magazines during Chanukah.

y first Zoom experience bears no resemblance to the Zoom we know today. In my youth, Zoom was a children’s television show that aired on PBS. It included a group of highly energetic and slightly hyperactive children singing and dancing. They even spoke their own language. This language, Ubbi-Dubbi, required you to place the syllable “ub” before each vowel sound in each syllable of each word. The famous greeting they proffered was “H-ub-I, fr-ub-iends.” This is known in the vernacular as “Hi friends.” My siblings and I went around speaking Ubbi-Dubbi with each other and our friends.

Pesach preparations are often fraught with frustration and angst. We rid our homes of chometz and turn over our kitchens while attempting to keep our families from starving. We pore over menus, shop for ingredients, and prepare Yom Tov meals for our loved ones. We also invite guests.

During the year, inviting guests is a simple process; on Pesach, however, it is different. Why is this invitation different from all other invitations? Pesach meals present a unique numerical challenge. Not only do we have first and second day meals; we also have first and second day meals of the first days as well as first and second day meals of the second days. Far be it from me to point out that virtually everyone I know can count to eight. After all, we spend the rest of springtime counting all the way to 49. This brings me to the heretical suggestion that we refer to the second days of Pesach as the seventh and eighth day. I know this is a radical departure from the minhag hamakom, but it might serve to ease some of the confusion that we face in these difficult times.