September 14, 2020

Digital Shabbat

The first thing my niece Samantha says when I walk into the living room at the cottage is, “Where is your phone?”

Not, Good Morning.

Not, can I get you a coffee?

No.

Where is your phone?

As if I have walked into the living room without my pants on.

To be fair, she is not wrong. The phone has become a bit of an appendage. Following me around the room like a bad smell. Its presence has become ubiquitous. Me and my shadow.

Truth be told, the phone is charging back in my room. I neglected to plug it in last night and so the battery was dead. But, for reasons which are not entirely clear, I decide to take umbrage from this back-handed accusation to electronic dependence and addiction. So, instead of saying it is being charged, I say “I am doing a digital shabbat.”

Samantha says “Digital shabbat?”

I say “Yes.”

She says, “Is that a thing?”

I say, “24 hours with no phone, no computer, no internet.” Orthodox Jews, my sister and her family amongst them, go without internet, electricity, driving, and much more from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday in order to observe the sabbath, the Jewish day of rest. I am prepared to do the same. Well, not quite. But at least digitally.

Samantha says “But then wouldn’t it be non-digital shabbat?” 

“No,” I reply. “It is called digital shabbat.” 

“No, that makes no sense,” chimes in another niece. “It has to be non-digital.”

There is, I have come to learn, a fine line between being thought of as knowledgable and being thought of as a know-it-all. Although, being a bit of a know-it-all myself, I know that not really to be true. The line is not fine at all. Because it is actually really easy to figure out in which camp you belong. If your friends and family spend time but, more importantly, take pleasure, in trying to prove you wrong, then dollar to donuts they think of you as a know-it-all.

It is, if I have to be completely honest with myself, not so much the difference between being knowledgable and being a know-it-all, it is the difference between being thought of as self-confident and being thought of as smug. Now I don’t think I am smug. I just think it is a tiny bit amusing that they think I could possibly ever be wrong.

I mean, as if.

The shift from wonderment to derision has been gradual but I can remember the moment when the air first slowly began to leak from the balloon. I’m not sure why, but we were talking about Brazil and someone asked what the population was.

“214 million,” I volunteered.

And then Danna did something none of my nieces had ever done before. Certainly not right in front of me. She fact checked me.

“198 million,” she said. Which, in my book, was well within the margin of error, but Danna made it clear she would be watching me. And it looked like her sisters were following suit.

“I am sure it is called digital shabbat.”

I cannot, they are convinced, be more wrong. 

Then Bubby Judy, who has been inconspicuously scrolling on her phone says “He’s right.”

You have to understand how much I love Judy, who is Caroline’s mother. And, I have no doubt, how much she loves me.

But when she says “He’s right,” she says it in the exact same way she might say “My dog just died.”

Such sadness.

Then Caroline, who I know also loves me says “Fuck!”

In case you are wondering about the difference between being thought of as knowledgable or as an insufferable know it all, there it is.

They lick their wounds but now there is another challenge with which they can trip me up.

“You are going to go 24 hours without using your phone?” Asks Samantha using a tone she might adopt had I told her I was going to devote my life to yoga and meditation.

I say “Yes.”

“Shabbat started last night,” she says. She is right. As it happens, it is Saturday morning. Today is the Jewish sabbath.

I say “True. I am going to do 24, no 25, hours starting from now. It is now 9:35, I won’t use my phone or the Internet until 10:35 on Sunday morning.”

Sammy says, “I love you Uncle Ronnie and it’s not like I don’t have faith in you. But you are never going to make it.”

Then my brother, who has been reading the newspaper on his iPad and seemingly not paying attention says “Let’s make it interesting. Loser makes a donation to ICRF.” I say ok. We agree on a number. Forgetting to plug in my phone last night is about to benefit the Israel Cancer Research Fund no matter what.

Caroline, my sister in law says, “What the hell are you going to do all day?  I’ve never seen you without your phone.”

“Piece of cake,” I say. “25 hours will be a piece of cake.”

25 hours.

Fuck.

What am I going to do for 25 hours?

I start by unloading the dishwasher.

I have gone from never unloading the dishwasher to it now being one of my primary chores at the cottage.

I actually don’t mind unloading the dishwasher. It is mindless work which has a flow and rhythm to it. Even accompanied with a slight sense of satisfaction as the dishwasher empties and the cupboards and cutlery fill in an orderly fashion. I have a pattern. Coffee cups and glasses from the top compartment first. Then the dishes and cereal bowls from the bottom compartment. I end with the cutlery trays – I remove them from the dishwasher, bring them straight to the cutlery drawers, then do the transfer in an efficient and seamless manner.

I have a system. I sometimes even hum a tune.

Today is It’s Raining Men.

As a result, I am really fast.

Hallelujah it’s raining men.

Which ordinarily, would be fine.

But the thing is, Caroline was the one who loaded the dishwasher last night. Caroline believes in a lot of things. But she has no faith in the technology which powers the modern-day dishwasher. She likes her dishes clean. Really clean. As a result, while the rest of us perform a perfunctory rinse, a quick pass under the spray, before loading a dish, Caroline undertakes a task which is tantamount to washing the dish itself.

Which is why, I say in my defense, I do not realize I am unloading a dirty dishwasher until I get to the very last dish in the bottom compartment. A dish which contains a tiny memory of last night’s chicken cacciatore. I reach into the top cupboard and pull out a powder blue coffee cup and examine it closely. Then I smell it. It is not lemony fresh. It is Tim Horton’s.

I look up to see if anyone in my family has noticed. But their respective noses are all buried, oblivious, in their electronic devices.

Hmm.

Don’t judge me. I only consider it for about ten seconds.

Maybe twenty.

Then I load the dishwasher up again and run it. And then, deciding to err on the side of caution, load it up again with cups and dishes I am 99% sure are already clean.

Who needs a phone?

God bless mother nature. She’s a single woman too.

While I wait for the second load of dishes to run I jump in the car and drive to the variety store in order to buy the newspaper. The owner of the variety store, a cranky Englishman out of a Dickensian novel whose name, we learned after two years, is Keith, has a bemused disdain for people who shop at variety stores. Back in the day when we rented videos from him, he could not fathom why we did not return movies on time and instead incurred the late fees. “You must really hate money,” he had once said to one of my shocked nieces in a temporary moment of weakness. We have been frequenting his store for over ten years and have truly developed a fierce loyalty to him and his wife who, despite outward gruffness, has genuine, if somewhat disguised, warmness for our family. I often buy household items like detergent and cereal and he tells me the price waiting, hoping even, that I will change my mind. One time he refused to let me buy a case of water, instead coming out from behind the counter in order to show me a cheaper alternative.

I know he will never understand why anyone would pay $8 for a newspaper. I never have the heart to tell him I am only buying the newspaper in order to do the crossword. My brother once asked me to buy two copies so that he and Caroline could also do the crossword but I told him I could never do that to Keith.

But today I am not buying the newspaper only for the crossword. I am buying it for the newspaper. I am going to, old school, read it cover to cover.

I also buy a diet coke and drink it in the car.

When I get back to the cottage I go through the garage so I can throw the empty can of diet coke into the recycling. The recycling bin is filled to the top and there are two other full green bags of recycling, plus two blue bags of garbage, tied up and ready to be taken to the dump.

Nobody likes to take the garbage to the dump. First of all, it is a little far and is at the end of a 12 km-long narrow twisty dirt trail which is off the main road and a little hard to find. Second, it means driving with smelly bags of garbage in your trunk. Nobody likes to do it. My brother does it 95% of the time and I do it only if he really begs me to do it. And he doesn’t like to beg. Hence the 5%.

But I don’t have my phone, have nothing to do and I have miles to go before I tweet.

So I load up my trunk with the bags of recycling and smelly garbage and make my way to the local dump.

But then I almost immediately get lost. Because, you know, I never do this.

I have driven 19 km down a narrow twisty dirt road before I admit to myself that I am lost. I am on the wrong narrow twisty dirt road. So I retrace my route and find myself back on the main road having to decide whether to turn left or right in order to find the correct narrow twisty dirt road.

I would call my brother or search for it on my phone but… digital shabbat.

So I stand on the side of the road and like a crazed man, flag down a cyclist.

I ask him if he knows where the Huntsville town dump is.

He decides this would be a good time for him to rehydrate so I watch him gulp from his water bottle before he answers. He doesn’t actually speak. He just points to a clearing in the road which is about twenty metres from where we are standing.

A clearing which has a sign which says. City Dump. 12 km.

I say thanks.

Then he says. Be careful. It is a dirt road and it is a little narrow and twisty.

No, he doesn’t say that. He just nods and drinks more of his water.

I have been gone for almost two hours. Nobody asks where I have been. I go to my spot on the couch and do my crossword. I am not really concentrating because I look up every time someone goes into the garage. I’m waiting for someone to notice I took the garbage to the dump. But nobody does. For two hours people go in and out of the garage and nobody says a word about the five bags of recycling and garbage which have magically disappeared.

Then my brother comes up from the dock and says “This digital shabbat experiment is not working for me. I’m not your secretary.”

I say, “What?”

He says, “Allie texted me to ask where you were and if you were ok.”

I say, “Oh. Ok. Anyone else?”

And he says, “Anyone else?”

I say, “Yeah.”

And he says, “No. And she had a message.”

I look up in anticipation.

He says, “You need to get back on your phone.”

I say “Ok, what’s the message?”

He looks down to his phone and reads “Connie Hellerman is coming to dinner.” Then he looks up and smiles. Actually, it is a smirk.

Connie Hellerman.

I say thanks. I go back to my cabin and grab my now fully charged phone. I text Allie to tell her I am coming back to town and will make it for dinner.

Then I go online and make a donation to ICRF.

I look at my watch.

4:04

Not bad for my first try.

I go back to the cottage and announce I am driving back to the city.

Caroline says “Have fun.”

My brother says “Any chance I could convince you to go on a dump run?”

And I say “It would be my pleasure.”

The end.