My Interview with Schlomo Kaplowitz

Howard: Thank you for granting me this interview, Schlomo.

Schlomo (speaks in a heavy Yiddish accent): Call me Bob. All my friends do.

Howard: How’d you come by the name Bob?

Schlomo: When I was a teen, everyone thought I was bobbing for apples. In actuality, I was sticking my head in a bucket to wash my beard. Hence, it’s Bob.

Howard: There’s a rare painting of you I’ve seen. That’s an impressive beard.

Schlomo: You should see my wife’s!

Howard: She has a beard?

Schlomo: Well, it’s merkin. Huge one too! It’s like the Black Forrest. You need a map to find your way out.

Howard: So tell me the story of when you met George Washington. Not many know this.

Schlomo: Well, George and I were about 11 when George caught me cutting down a cherry tree with a hatchet. Boy! Was he pissed!

Howard: Why was his pissed?

Schlomo: Because he’d be caught in a lie.

Howard: He admitted to chopping down a cherry tree. Remember when George was confronted by his father and he said “I cannot tell a lie.”

Schlomo: Yeah, but he chopped only one. This made two. He was a weakling. There was no way he could physically chop down two. Believe me when I say he was a weakling. He was a weakling! Most of the time, he couldn’t pull his pants up without getting a charley horse.

Howard: That’s not the George Washington we’ve all come to know and love.

Schlomo: He was no angel: He ratted on me. But I got revenge! One cold and snowy night at Valley Forge, I snuck into his bedroom and placed a termite in the box holding his wooden teeth. The next morning he was stunned to find out his dentures had cavities.

Howard: That had to be upsetting.

Schlomo: Not really. He found he could use the splinters as tootpicks, so all in all an end result he could live with.

Howard: Now, how is it you’ve been left out of the annals of American history? You were the tailor to the Continental Army. You made sure every hole was sewn or patched and saved thousands from freezing to death at Valley Forge.

Schlomo: Well, it just so happens I was heading to West Point with Benedict Arnold’s newly made breeches when I ran into a man who asked me to hold a leather satchel as he went behind a tree to relieve himself. Along came some militiamen who seized the satchel, arrested me and put me on trial as a spy: I was hanged. It was a Major Andre who duped me.

Howard: That’s horrible.

Schlomo: You think that’s bad? He went around impersonating me and came home to my wife.

Howard: I don’t know what to say.

Schlomo: Oh, don’t worry—he got caught.

Howard: How’s that?

Schlomo: Unlike me, he wasn’t circumcised.

Howard: I want to thank you for taking the time to sit down with me.

Schlomo: Time is all I have up here, you putz.

THE END

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