I went to a Jewish High School in Calgary. Actually, Henry Wise Wood wasn't technically Jewish, but many teens of Jewish extraction attended. They were from Eagle Ridge, children of doctors and dentists, lawyers and accountants, and while they were definitely a minority in the school, they owned it in decisive ways. They drove better cars than the teachers, and made the parking lot look high class. They attended the Calgary Jewish Academy--most likely on weekends, and were therefore better educated than the rest of us non-Jewish boys, we Goyim. Through their intervention on student council, there was a delivery of enormous honey glazed Texas Donuts on Friday at lunch. We Goyim mimicked Yiddish expressions--calling each other schmuks and schmendricks, schlemiels and shiksas, without knowing anything at all about what those words means. And they brought Hewlett-Packard programmable calculators to school for use in Chem and Physics and Math--when the ...

Give us this Day is the online creative journal of Kurtis Kitagawa, PhD (Edinburgh), MPhil (Oxford), MA (Chicago), BA First Class Honours (Calgary), who, withal, considers himself a student of history. Check daily for freshly composed essays and offbeat creative writing inspired by a life spent in universities, government, and business. Job offers gratefully accepted. Alternative facts welcome, and will not be burned. Nor will their ashes be used as eye shadow!