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All About You 2:
Libby Lazewnik, Jewish kids' favorite author, presents another helping of marvelous Jewish stories about Jewish kids in this ever-popular collection.
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Pass It On
Everyone has heard of famous explorers who spend years tracking giant rivers to their source. There is one thing that’s much harder to track to its source than any river. And that’s a bad habit.
How are habits born? The story is different for everyone. But in the case of Sruly Perlowitz, there was a clear and definite beginning - and also, luckily for him, a clear and definite end.
This is how it happened.
. . .
Sruly stood in front of his dresser mirror gazing gravely at his reflection. There was no question about it: this new, serious expression suited him. It lent him a certain dignity. He pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin a fraction. Yes, that was it.
Grave, unsmiling, with just a touch of the condescending.
The new Sruly.
The idea had come from his brother Shimshy’s friend, Dovid. When Dovid had come over to their house to study the other night, Sruly had been fascinated by Dovid’s demeanor. Not once during the whole evening had the kid cracked a smile. To Sruly’s eleven-year-old eyes, Dovid seemed the epitome of cool. Even when Sruly had told a really hilarious joke, the most Dovid would concede was a faint twitching of the lips.
Sruly had been practicing ever since.
Over the next days, he trained himself not to laugh uproariously over things he found funny. He worked at keeping his lips pressed together always, or else pursed in a studious and slightly supercilious expression. When others greeted him he nodded back solemnly, rather like a king acknowledging the homage of his subjects. His younger brothers, eager to share an idea or a good story, found Sruly looking down his nose at them in a strange new way.
It wasn’t that he was mean to them, exactly. It was more as though he had scaled a tall mountain and was dealing from some detached Olympian height. One by one, the boys found their way to their mother to ask, to complain, or just to puzzle the thing out together.
“Ma,” said Pinny, the youngest Perlowitz boy, perched on the kitchen stool, “how come Sruly doesn’t smile anymore?”
Mrs. Perlowitz was startled. “He doesn’t?”
“Nope. Yesterday I told him my best riddle and he just sort of crumpled up his chin.”
“Hm.” His mother put the baby, Bracha, down on the floor to play.
“How long has this been a problem? I hadn’t noticed it.”
“Just a week or two, so far. But I don’t like it, Ma.”
“If it’s true,” Mrs. Perlowitz said with a faint wrinkle between her eyes, “then I don’t much like it either...”
Chaim, next oldest after Pinny in age, trotted into the kitchen next. “Ma, could you please tell Sruly to stop acting so high and mighty?”
Absently smoothing the baby’s fine hair, Mrs. Perlowitz asked “Describe how he’s been behaving, exactly.”
“Well, he’s got this new thing of looking at you as if you were some kind of bug he just found crawling around on a rock! He never gets excited about anything. He never laughs at my jokes anymore.” Chaim screwed up his face in concentration. “I guess the main thing is...he never smiles anymore.”
Duvy and Leib, the nine-year-old twins, tracked their mother down to the laundry room in the basement later.
“Ma, is Sruly coming down with something?” Duvy demanded.
“Why do you say that?” Mrs. Perlowitz asked, though she had a sinking feeling she already knew.
“He’s been walking around like he has a stomachache or something.”
Leib added, “He’s so serious all the time. I can’t explain it exactly. But lately, there’s been something different about him.”
“Could it have something to do,” Ma asked, switching on the washing machine, “with his disappearing smile?”
“Yes!” both boys shouted over the whirr and thump of the machine. “That’s it - exactly!”
Mutty, her chubby, cheerful eight-year-old, didn’t say much, but his mother knew him well enough to see that he was troubled. As she tucked him in that night, she bent over and whispered, “What is it, Mutty? You’ve hardly even given me a smile all evening.”
Mutty mustered one up for her at once, but said, “It’s not me who’s stopped smiling, Ma...” Mother and son locked eyes for a moment, and then Mrs. Perlowitz nodded. There was no need for any more words.