Posts Tagged ‘no helmuts riding motorcyles’

Jews on Motorcycles

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

My dad, the over-protective Jew, had a couple of mantras.  One was never ride on the back of a motorcycle.  Another, never go for a ride in a small plane.

Uh-oh.  I did both.  Behind his back.

By the way, I can say Jew, because I am one.  You can’t.  I mean, if you’re not.  Just saying.

The girlfriends I made growing up were the ones who went to school on Jewish holidays, along with the other six kids in Beverly Hills who weren’t Jewish.   I don’t know why, but I was drawn to gentiles.  I’ll be making a point in a second.  I often went with these friends and their families to church, and never once, including with my own family, did I enter a temple. I wasn’t a religious churchgoer; I just sort of tagged along on a Sunday morning if it followed a sleepover the night before.  Trust me; even then, I never wanted to wake up before noon.

On many weekends, I was the guest of my best friend Susie at the Gun Club.  Yeah, that’s right, Gun Club.  A Jew at a gun club is an oxymoron.  Susie and I made an odd couple – she, the athletic tomboy, and me, the undersized neurotic Jew.  Here’s how different we were.  For her 13th birthday, Susie’s parents gave her a rifle, a Browning 22, along with deodorant, an ironing board and an iron.  She remembers walking to Kerr’s Sporting Goods, at the corner of Peck & Wilshire, across from Saks Fifth Avenue, with her rifle wrapped in brown paper, so that she could get it fitted to her size.   On my thirteenth birthday, the doorbell rang and a bouquet of red roses was delivered with a note from my dad telling me how beautiful I was.  If you want to see just how beautiful, check out the photo below! (more…)