In Plain Engel-ish

Was your experience with dance lessons as uncomfortable as mine? Mine were held at The Jewish Community Center when I was fourteen. All of us sufferers were eighth-graders. I assume our class was only for Jewish kids because back then many of our parents would be alarmed if we even dated, let alone married, someone outside our faith. I guess they figured that we might as well learn how to dance exclusively with partners whom we might one day “waltz down” the aisle with in marriage.  Fourteen was a bad age to hold members of the opposite sex in your...

When I ran for student council treasurer in high school, my opponent was Ben, our 6’3 star basketball center. His nickname, of course, was “Big Ben” so all his campaign posters incorporated London’s Big Ben. My campaign manager was a kid who sat next to me in homeroom, very bright but quite unpopular for reasons I couldn’t understand. We brainstormed as to how we could highlight my name on posters and subtly disparage his. “Hey,” I said, “how about: ‘Why settle for Big Ben when you can vote for jolly old Engel-land?’” “Well, aren’t you the clever one?” he lazily...

I wasn’t a bit surprised when one of the first wildly successful fads of our computer age was gaming, with millions of young people and adults (NOT ME, I hasten to add) playing electronic video games like those offered on Xbox and PlayStation and then later playing a million others on their personal computers.  I think games have a unique allure for us because we first learn to love them in early childhood. As little ones, we find this competitive form of play, which is regulated by rules, endlessly challenging and fun since we can win a game not just...

With my career having been spent frequently lecturing on a stage, I am often asked if I was in many plays during high school or perhaps later in community amateur theater. Nope. Somehow, I have never been any good at playing a role. I guess I just don’t have the vivid imagination to inhabit another character. There’s only one peculiar character I can do successfully on stage: Elliot Engel, Teacher-Lecturer. I did have one experience being in a high school play — well, two actually: my First and my Last. It was a minor role in Eugene O’Neil’s Ah, Wilderness!....

AAA Lighting Aardvark Repair Service Aardwissen, Lars Aarnet Design Aasinja, Meredith Those are the first five entries in the current Raleigh, North Carolina phone book. OK — you know I’m just playing with you. There is no longer any actual thick paperback city phone book here or probably where you live. They have all gone the way of the rotary-dial telephone. Well, I do see that you can download a PDF file of many city-specific old phone books just by using your magic iPhone. But if your iPhone incompetency matches mine, then accessing a PDF is about as likely as...