Nothing to do with Babysitting

I'm sitting in a Rabbi's chair, at a Rabbi's desk, listening to Iron & Wine's Jezebel, and in the background there's another Rabbi's voice booming from a tape deck in the children's rooms as they pretend to fall asleep.
I'm sure they don't understand half the words coming out of those speakers, but this is how they go to bed, listening to a man preaching things they don't understand, can't comprehend, and are too young to even contemplate. But it soothes them, and I find that interesting more than anything else.
It really is true that the way a person is raised molds them into who they are, even if longer down the road they reject everything they were ever taught. My dad was raised as a religous Jew in Israel his whole childhood, went to religious boarding schools and almost got expelled when he talked to a girl, and the second he got out of there and he dropped the act, because that's what it was for him, an act. He used to tell me about how the first time he tried pork he dashed under the table for fear of G-d smiting him, which is of course an embellishment, but you see the point. But even now, after being rejected by some of his family members, scorned and so on, he is proud of me when I learn something about our heritage, about our religion, sing him a song or prayer in hebrew, and sometimes he sings along with me. Maybe it's just because he's my dad, or maybe it's something else, but he truly admires and is happy that I love just what he ran away from.
So maybe it's not exactly true that how you're raised is how you stay, because I wasn't raised with these prayers and songs and facts in my life, but I found them, I sought them and now they are with me.
Whether or not I believe in all of these things my religion calls truth is a different story, and I question just as much as any other. In fact, my views on the presence of G-d change constantly. All I know for sure is it's nice to have something to hope for, to pray to, and I notice even those with no faith or so-called religion sometimes pray for things as well.

I Watch Too Much Television.

I found more time to do this.

One of my best friends in the whole entire world is experiencing his first year in college right now, and when I say experiencing, I mean it in the college sense of the word. And it's frightening me. He's joined a fraternity, not a frat, (apparently the first thing they teach you when you become a member is the terminology or something ludacris like that) and he's busier getting drunk and hooking up with girls than doing his school work. Okay okay, I'm not saying I wouldn't be going to parties, (though I wouldn't be getting drunk) or actually be doing every single assignment before the due date and with vigor, but I don't like where he's going with it. Maybe that's mostly because I never would have expected this from him. We've been close for around four years, and he's almost the last person I'd put in the "get trashed and have sex with college girls on school nights" category. Don't you hate that? I think I'll put "realizing you don't know someone you love as well as you thought you did" at the top of the list when it comes to hate.
I really like quotes today. As Joey would say, "I'm Sorry?"
Anyway. That's been coming up a lot lately. (That's what she said.) I mean of course, finding out I don't know people as well as I should or thought I did. It hurts a lot. I'm sort of in the process of losing a lot of people right now, people that mean the world to me and more, or at least they used to. Cliche as it sounds, it's almost as if they take part of me with them when they go, or when they change, or when I find I was wrong about them. And it's not as if I don't want to chase after them or make sure they stay a part of my life, but sometimes too much effort from one side just makes it worthless. I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
On the other hand, I've been needing new for a while and I think I'm getting it. Or getting there. We'll see. You know what phrase I hate? "Only time will tell." Just putting that out there, and again with the quotes.
Well.

"Goodbye," for now.