Trope in the troughs

Ben and I are practicing our trope on opposite sides of the living room. It's a cacophony of hebrew cantation and it's grating on my nerves. His friend Spencer is sprawled out on the couch flicking a zippo lighter across his pants.  He mimics along: "Chal-che-ya-barkoo-aye-don't-know-fuck." "Please don't set the couch on fire," I tell him, as I've been saying all morning. "From the top?" Bens says, "with gum."

I'm still practicing my few lines of trope though my 15 minutes a day has shrunk to twice a week. It's just so incredibly tedious, the same thing over and over. Ben too is barely practicing. Together we are the worst role models. Meanwhile I'm paying Niki $40.00 a week for a half-hour of tutoring.

"He's not practicing," I say to her a few days later when she comes to the door. "Maybe you should start coming every other week."

"Well, it's up to you. But then there are the parents who think at least coming each week gives their kid some continuity. He actually is doing quite well."

Ben looks up at me sheepishly. "I practice more than once a week."

"What about yesterday?" 

"Yes I did. You were sleeping."

"What time?"

"After reading 'Ender's Game' in the basement."

"And the day before?"

"That was the weekend, you said I didn't have to on the weekend."

Meanwhile Niki is standing there and she doesn't add to the back end.

It's actually true what Niki says, he is doing well. I hear him in the dining room, he already knows much of his Torah reading and is nearly done with his haftorah. Ben is just one of those kids that can get away with little work. It's his memory, ironclad and intact, not like mine, an open sieve. Which is why it's actually more important for me to be practicing each day.

I guess I'm in a funk. No job, no prospects, and how will I pay for his party? Meanwhile each week we get another goldleafed confirmation invitation to some obscenely over the top country club where the dessert table is more than my entire Bar Mitzvah budget. How can we even afford Ben's party when each Saturday I have to fork over practically a food shopping bill's worth of money for one of his friends to go up to the Bima.

I guess I've officially turned into the Jewish Scrooge.  Just great.