The kvetcher

A man gets on a train. He’s going from Grand Central Station in New York City to Chicago. It’s a fairly lengthy train trip, which is a good thing, because he’s going there to deliver a lecture on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,a book he hasn’t actually opened in the last 15 years. So he gets onto the train, sits down, takes out his copy of The Phenomenology of Spirit, which he’s planning to review on this lengthy train ride, and as he’s doing this an older Jewish man comes in, excuses himself and sits down opposite. For a while everything is fine. The man reads his book. Then, about half an hour outside New York, the old man leans back in his seat and looks up at the ceiling and says “Oy, am I thoisty!” Fifteen seconds later, he does the same thing. And then 15 seconds after that he does it again. The guy with the Hegel book realizes this will go on as long as the other man is thirsty, so he sighs, marks his place in the book, gets up, walks down the corridor all the way to the end of the car where there’s one of those fountain things with Dixie cups, fills one, gets about ten steps back, thinks better of it, turns around, goes back, takes another Dixie cup and fills it too. So he’s walking the aisle of this moving train, very gingerly trying to balance two full cone-shaped paper cups of water without spilling too much onto his suit. He gets back to his seat. The old man hasn’t noticed anything. He’s just sitting there going, “Oy, am I thoisty!” The professor hands the old man the cup. The old man takes the cup, his eyes shining with gratitude, and drains it. Before he can say anything, the professor gives him the other cup, and he drains that too. The professor goes past him to his seat where he’s left his Hegel, picks up the book, opens to the marked page, reads about three words, and the old man goes, “Oy, was I thoisty!”

 I think this joke penetrates to the heart of the Ashkenazi Jewish mindset.

Michael Wex is the author of Born to Kvetch, Rhapsody in Schmaltz and many other books.

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