My wife has long tried to convey to me that I’m "thick" in order to help me with social relations. In my mid-50s I’m beginning to accept that she’s right. In my pride, I liked to think of myself as swift. You’re not swift, you’re thick, my wife says. There were a couple of incidents recently. One, we were at a friends’ for dinner and I was talking to the wife in the kitchen about a mutual friend’s marriage, how the friend had complained to me that his marriage was grinding. The wife said, "Well honey Jimmy Goldberg (pseudonym) is married to a psycho lunatic, of course he thinks it’s grinding." Just then her son came up to us. He’s probably 13. He said, "Jimmy Goldberg is married to a psycho lunatic?"
And the mother said, "Not that Jimmy Goldberg, we’re talking about another Jimmy Goldberg."
I said, "Do you know two Jimmy Goldbergs?"
My wife has been laughing at my expense since this episode. In other situations she will just say, Do you know two Jimmy Goldbergs?
I realize how thick I was, and how my thickness was actually hurtful on that occasion.
I’m forgetting the other incident. But they’re legion.
I was thinking about how thick I am this morning because I’m working on a Jewish identity book and I was writing up something that happened to me a few years ago. I was sitting in an editor’s office and we were talking about our non-Jewish wives, and he asked, "Well you know the only question about your wife’s family, of course– Will they hide you?"
"Will they hide me?" I said.
He had to repeat himself. Of course he meant, will they hide you when the Gestapo come.
I realize now, that was thick. Not understanding him. I’d never even thought about that. But he obviously worried about it. So do a lot of American Jews. Some even have bags packed, against that day coming. But I don’t believe that day is coming. Those other Jews would say, Well he’s thick, and other words. Naive, credulous.
Maybe it’s not the worst thing to be thick?
