9/24/2007

It takes longer to build my Sukkah:

Our sukkah's frame consists of pipes connected by joints held together by tiny bolts that one screws in with an Allen Wrench. In its time it was about as easy to assemble as any Sukkah could be, and I used to assemble it in an hour.

It takes me a lot longer now, and there are two reasons. One is that I'm older, slower and less strong. The other is less obvious. Like many oldsters, I'm more aware of my mortality and more averse to risk-taking. I know this makes no sense, my life was more worth preserving when there was more of it left to live, to say nothing of the lives of my children, but that's the way people are. So I take a lot more time than I used to, to make sure that the bolts that hold the sukkah together, that keep the schach from falling on our heads, are screwed in tight.

OCD? I don't think so. I know that those bolts used not to be screwed in so well.