Yom Kippur is a time to mochel people. “Forgive and forget,” they say. And I’ve got that covered. As time goes on, I find that I’m getting better and better at forgetting.

“Are you mochel me?”

“For what?”

“That thing I did to you. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“So, you forgive me?”

“I don’t know. It’s still too fresh.”

But when you’re young, you remember everything. Kids remember every fight they’ve ever had with their siblings. And there are a lot of those. I know that, as a parent. And there’s nothing I can do to stop these fights from happening. I can’t give all of them all my attention all the time. I’m like a doctor—sometimes I have to make appointments. And while I’m seeing one patient, the other patients pass the time in the waiting room by fighting.

“Did you just throw that magazine at him?”

“He was hogging the water cooler.”

And I’m the referee. I have to be, because, as a third party, I can see the bigger picture.

“Look, I don’t care what he did to you this morning. You can’t hide the milk and then go to school.”

And they’re silly fights. For example, my kids fight about who’s going to wash first on Shabbat. Really? I’m not making Hamotzi until everyone washes. You know this. I wash last. What are you fighting for? The privilege of sitting around and not being able to say anything for longer?

“Yeah, but last time he washed first!”

And the other kid goes, “Mm! Mm m m m mm!”

And it’s not just in our house. My wife and I have spoken to several people about this and, apparently, we’re not alone. For example, CC’s and LHF’s kids both fight over who’s going to take a shower last. Everyone wants the cold water, apparently.

O.K., so maybe there are some benefits to showering last. My kids say that they don’t want to hang out in their Shabbat clothing for extra time, because it means they can’t get dirty. (Well, clearly they can. They mean that they’re not supposed to.) So when we tell them to start showering, it means that whatever fun, messy activity everyone’s doing, someone has to be the first to walk away from that. For two days. Who wants to be that person?

That’s definitely why I shower last.

So, sometimes the kids have reasons; we just don’t see them. For example, RK says that her kids fight about who gets the pink booster seat. My kids fight over that too. I have mostly boys. No one wants it. Why do we even have a pink booster seat? I guess we got it because we had a girl at some point. She’s 11. But the boys don’t want it, no matter how much we try to explain to them that pink used to be a boys color, back before car seats existed. To be fair, we do a lot of carpooling, and when you’re sitting in a car full of boys, you don’t want to be the one in the pink booster seat. It’s all everyone will talk about.

O.K., so maybe that’s an argument we could prevent. But, honestly, sometimes it feels like kids invent things to fight about. For example, EH told me that her kids fight about who has to come into the house last, because whoever comes in last has to close the door. No one wants to do that. How are you supposed to prevent this, as a parent? You taught your kids, ages ago, that whoever comes in last has to close the door. This isn’t a punishment for coming in last. Were you supposed to say that the first person in has to close the door? Or that each person has to close the door behind themselves, right in front of the next person?

And numerous people tell me that their kids fight about where they sit at the table. So do mine.

So you’re like, “O.K., permanent seating.” But permanent seating is a disaster. Now they fight with me instead. “Why does he get that seat for all time?”

They all want to sit next to me. I feel like Yaakov Avinu with the stones, except that I don’t think all my kids are suddenly going to merge into one really big kid.

None of our kids’ fights will matter tomorrow. None of them will matter in 10 minutes. I know this because I’ve been around longer than they have, and I no longer remember who washed first on any given week when I was growing up (though I have a sister who might).

But my point, I think, is that Hashem is our parent. So He probably feels the same way about us.

“Stop fighting! Not everything has to be fair! You think you have a lot of kids?”

And that’s what I’m saying—all the fights that adults have, even though they’ll matter for longer than our kids’ fights—but from Hashem’s perspective, will they matter tomorrow?

Maybe, as we get older, we should learn to be as good at forgiving as we are at forgetting.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press and Aish.com, among others. He also has five books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].

By Mordechai Schmutter