I want to take a moment to address one of the most pertinent problems of today, as measured in the amount of mail I got this month.

I got one letter, and it was from an 8-year-old. He asked me some basic questions, such as how I got into writing, and which book I like best. I’m not going to say which book I like best. My books are like my kids. In fact, I sometimes call my books by my other books’ names.

So that was the letter. But I did get a rash of texts and emails that I need to respond to. This morning I got a text that read, “I’m a third grade rebbe in Lakewood, and I have a talmid who memorized your books. Please contact me about this.”

To be honest, it sounded a little urgent for something that shouldn’t sound so urgent. Am I in trouble? I’m not sure what he expects me to do about this. Do I call and say, “Hi, I’m returning a call about the talmid who memorized my books?”

“Yes…”

“Well, that’s all I know.”

Then I remembered that I’d gotten a similar email two weeks earlier, from a rebbe who wrote that he had a student who was infatuated with my fourth book, “Cholent Mix,” and that he wasn’t learning, he was studying my book and reading it aloud. To the rebbe. When he was trying to proctor recess. Finally, the rebbe thought he would get the kid to stop by challenging him to recite a chapter of the book by heart. (This is an old rebbe tactic going back to the time of the Mishna.) The rebbe then picked a chapter and tested him on it in front of the class, and the kid rattled it off.

“If you have any suggestions on what I can do to detox him from ‘Cholent Mix,’” the rebbe wrote, “I would greatly appreciate it.”

Personally, I was a little offended that the rebbe called it “detox.” I don’t know if I would use the word detox. My articles are largely nontoxic, for the most part.

I didn’t answer that email right away, as it was sent in June, during which I mark all of my high school students’ essays from the entire year, apparently, but I did notice that the email had been sent four times. So this is either all one very panicked rebbi, or there are a lot of third-grade classes in Lakewood that include a kid who memorized my book. Either way, I should probably answer them, even though it’s already the summer, and this is now the fourth-grade rebbe’s problem.

But before I do, I need to print disclaimers up here:

Note: I’m not a child-rearing expert, so take everything I say here with a grain of salt. Unless your doctor says you can’t have salt, in which case you should take everything I say with a blood-pressure pill.

Note to parents of my students: Please disregard the “not a child-rearing expert” thing. I’m very professional.

But that said, my first reaction was to tell the rebbe to buy the kid my other books. I have six in total. Let’s overwhelm him so there’s too much to memorize.

The rebbe might not want to do that, though. In his letter, he says, “Now if this boy learned Mishnayos Baal Peh the same way, I wouldn’t have a problem.”

I love it when adults say that. Telling a person, “If only you would use those kochos for X,” makes for a nice teachable moment, but even adults know that there are certain things that are easier to memorize. If your wife said, “If only you would use those kochos to memorize shopping lists,” it wouldn’t inspire you, it would annoy you.

“Okay, then at least remember to take the list with you.”

He has the kochos for this because he enjoys this. All you have to do is get him to enjoy Mishnayos. That’s your job, just like getting kids to enjoy reading and writing is mine. I don’t know how to do your job. I don’t even know how to do my job. (Note to parents of my students: I know how to do my job.) My job is hard enough, dealing with teenagers who don’t want to enjoy reading because they already enjoy Gemara.

“Yeah, but what do you do when you’re tired?”

“Sleep.”

Literally. Any given day there’s at least one guy napping in the classroom.

Anyway, before I’d gotten a chance to reply, the rebbe sent me a sixth email, telling me that the kid had written me a letter the previous week.

Wait. That was the kid? And how did the rebbe know that he wrote to me? Was the rebbi the one who’d suggested it? Because that actually seems like a great way to detox him. After all, they say, “Never meet your idols.” I am not a laugh a minute. I’m more like, “You know these articles that take you five minutes to read? Those are all the jokes I make in the course of a week.”

I certainly hope the rebbe was behind this, because, besides for that move, I’m not sure he handled it the right way. He mentioned in the letter that after he’d tested the kid in front of the class, the whole class started reciting chapters. Not only that, but the chapter he’d tested the kid on was about why children ask, “Why?” and now he has a whole class of kids asking, “Why?” at every opportunity.

So now I feel bad for not responding right away, and I understand why the rebbe was panicking. Maybe in the two weeks I didn’t respond, more and more kids had gotten inspired, and now he was surrounded by little kids quoting my lines at him.

“Please stop.”

“Why?”

Which is why he didn’t have time for a full text today. Just, “Help! My student has memorized your books! Please contact me about this.”

And my first question was, “Why?”

By Mordechai Schmutter

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].