We Don’t Want You to Know

It still happens to us, we just don’t want you to know.

We don’t want to bother you. We want you to think everything is fine, because overall it is fine, it’s just fine, and you don’t have to worry.

For us this is nothing. Just another day. Normal isn’t new, it isn’t special, it doesn’t require deep reflection.

We’re good, we promise. We watched the World Series (stayed up all night!) We cheered and we covered our eyes and we drank beer and we sang the anthem. We did all the things that all of us do — nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing worth getting upset about.

We do normal stuff like this all the time. We go to work and school, we have friends and go to parties; we Netflix and Hulu. We buy groceries and pay taxes.

We go to Synagogue. But we don’t go to be different, or to be separate.

We go to feel normal.

Because in elementary school we were called a Kike. Because we were yelled at for not revealing the horns on our heads.

Because the Jew Boy is rich and the Jew Girl is a stuck-up bitch.

Because despite doing everything to fit in, despite getting jobs and raising families, people still tell us that we control the media and run the banks and killed Jesus. We’re told we’re overreacting about a few swastikas spray painted on our walls (“probably just some kids.”) And enough with the Holocaust already! Sure it sounded awful and that movie was sad but why can’t you people move on?

So we don’t say anything. Instead we turn to our quiet communities and tell ourselves it will be okay, it’s gonna be fine, just act normal and pretend like nothing happened, like nothing ever happens.

Like the Muslim women who get spit on and have their headscarfs ripped from their skulls. Like the black men who get called N***** in front of their children. Like the homosexuals who get beat up or worse for the crime of minding their own business.

There are smaller moments too — the sideways stares and the person following us around the store. The “well I assumed since you were Jewish” or the “I thought all black people” or the “well I know you’re not a terrorist” comments. It happens to us so often it’s almost become…

Normal.

You see “A Star is Born” yet? I know, the Rams are undefeated, can you believe it? So glad to hear that your daughter is enjoying college. How fun! Ours is a Pi Phi.

Happy Halloween! Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Merry Christmas to you, too!

Oh, that. Sure, we heard, of course.

Right. Yeah, Pittsburgh. Yes, terrible. Holocaust survivor, heard that as well. Mm Hmm.

No, it’s okay, we’re fine. We just don’t want to bother you. To be honest, we don’t want you to know.

Besides — you really don’t want to know, do you?

But it was nice of you to ask.