ACTUAL NACHES MAY VARY

Jay and his brother gave a huge party for my in-laws' 62nd anniversary, where we played a little trick on our son Noah. Necessary background: Until his mid-20s, this son was a vildeh chayeh (he’s now 36 and an absolute delight to be with). First, he wouldn't eat anything resembling leftovers. What he WOULD eat is The Ultimate Leftover . . . hot dogs. He saw chicken casserole as a leftover and thought roast beef wasn’t food. Pizza, yes; no to everything else. Cookies, yes, IF they came from the store; he wouldn't eat the cookies I baked. He gagged at the sight of fish. My mother-in-law lost her temper over Noah’s refusal to try HALF A BAKED BEAN. This gives you the idea, and he did grow out of most of that in college. You'll think I'm the kind of pushy Jewish mother who says "Essen, essen," but I'm not. You have me confused with my mother-in-law. The second point is that from the time he could make sentences, he'd propose doing something like building a go-cart from someone’s abandoned lawnmower. We’d say, "Of COURSE you can't do that! What are you THINKING?" Then he'd cover his tracks with a "Just kidding." He was always in trouble at school, and when the principal called and said, “Do you know what your son is doing NOW?” — well, I didn’t have to ask which son. (You don’t want to know what he was doing.) Okay, here's where this is leading: For the party, guests had written on their response cards whether they wanted prime rib or salmon. Noah, grown, mailed his from Fort Collins; he checked "salmon" and wrote at the bottom: "Just kidding." So I arranged with the waiter to bring him the prime rib but hold it behind his back and give him salmon. Noah would schrei at the sight of the fish, and the waiter would pick up the plate and hand him the prime rib and say, “Just kidding.” It was a GREAT trick, it worked, and we laughed ourselves silly.