mayim

Last night I was sitting at Shopper's Cafe with a host of other Celtic fans watching the local team show their age. After leading comfortably in the first half, the trio of Pierce, Garnett, and Allen looked spent in the second as the younguns from Cleveland beat them to the spot. Some of Garnett's passes looked like exhausted lobs from someone who wanted to will his body to be 25 again, but took a look at the remarkable energy of LeBron James and considered retirement.

I found it amusing that in the back room the Saturday night band was deliberately blasting an oft repeated Boston song about the Charles River that runs through the city. The refrain: "For I love that dirty water, Boston you're my home" was particularly appropriate last night,

Not only were the Celtics leaning over their stomachs with fatigue, but earlier in the day we all were notified--by e-mail, signs on the Mass Turnpike, and something akin to Paul Revere advance representatives--not to drink the water. Somehow a pipe had burst only a mile or so from where I live rendering all water in Boston and a dozen nearby communities undrinkable lest we desire to spend significant portions of the next few days like some Celtics last night, bending over and holding our bellies.

The barflies adjacent to me got a charge out of the Dirty Water song sung by the band, but my hunch is that if this takes more than a couple of days to fix, there will be some sour looking hombres along the Charles in the very near future.

My father used to call square and folk dances as one of his several moonlighting jobs when he was a teacher and principal. (Those who squawk about outrageous teacher salaries might consider that at one time my dad called square dances, sold encyclopedias, taught Sunday School, ran after school recreation programs, recruited kids and was the head counselor for a summer camp, and lectured at NYU in order to supplement his "outrageous" salary). On Friday nights at the summer camp dad would employ his folk dancing skills to call and teach Israeli folk dances. One of the dances that was popular was called Mayim, a dance designed to complement pleas to whomever for water. I tend to think that the crew at the Shopper's Cafe are unfamiliar with the song Mayim though I did consider watching some eyeballs roll by going over and asking them if they did. Nevertheless, I was humming it at the bar as I watched the Cavaliers bury the Celtics.