Well the Boy Scout thing wasn’t going to happen. I so looked up to my brother Larry. I busted his chops a lot but I really admired him. More about Larry later.
Larry got a lot of positive attention when he was Bar Mitzvah. So I wanted to be Bar Mitzvah too. So after school a few days a week I would attend Hebrew School. I have a lousy ear for languages and I tried real hard and was making some progress when I was suddenly expelled from Hebrew School and my Mother received a phone call from the Rabbi telling my Mother that if she wanted to do something for Judaism she should have me convert.
It was 1964. I should have had my Bar Mitzvah in 1963 when I was 13, but like I said I have a problem with languages. 1964 is also when the movie “Gold Finger” came out. James Bond was cool but being the kind of different kid that I was, I thought ODD JOB was way cooler than James Bond.
I thought it was so cool that Odd Job could decapitate somebody with his bowler hat just by tossing it like a Frisbee. Finding a suitable metal shallow bowl I took the liberty of cutting a slit in my double knitted Yarmulke carefully sliding the metal shallow bowl between the layers of knit material and then carefully sewing it up again.
Showing up at Hebrew class early I couldn’t resist giving my class mates a demonstration. I needed a head. But not a live one. Improvising I noticed there was a statue of Theodor Herzl the father of modern political Zionism.
Stealthily removing my Yarmulke I took careful aim and my Yarmulke was airborne just as the Rabbi entered the room to see Theodor Herzl decapitated by Odd Mitchie.
So not only did I fail to become a Boy Scout. I also failed getting my Bar Mitzvah.
Oh and by the way, by this time my Mother was no longer answering the phone with “hello”, instead she was answering the phone with “what has Mitchell done now?”