Nishtugadocht

My grandmother - a woman of many gifts - had a marvelous way with words, both in English and Yiddish in which she was fluent. The Yiddish language is rather elastic, in that many words can only be loosely translated which gives them great flexibility to be used in a variety of contexts. They can also be used as a noun or a verb or perhaps even an adjective. For instance, the word 'schlep', which roughly means an arduous trek. You can schlep, as in "you want us to schlep all the way to the beach?" or something can be a schlep, such as "it was such a schlep from the car to the beach."

Another popular word is 'kvetch', which involves complaining. One can kvetch, such as "all he does is kvetch about his 401(k)", or else be a kvetch, as in "she is such a kvetch about losing her money." One of my favorite words is 'farbissineh,' meaning a miserable or unhappy person. But, somebody can be a farbissineh (noun), or else have a farbissineh face (adjective).

A word used often by my grandmother was "nishtugadocht," describing a situation or person involving bad luck, or somebody who couldn't get out of their own way - a sad sack, if you will. "He's such a nishtugadocht, breaking his leg like that." Or, upon hearing that an unfortunate event had befallen somebody she knew, exclaiming "oy, nishtugadocht," as if to say 'how unfortunate.' My grandmother would have been the first to agree that our electrician is a real nishtugadocht.

One of the more minor aspects of our remodeling was installing a real doorbell, in place of the wireless type we had that hadn't worked right since we'd moved in. As we planned to relocate and replace the front door - with the walls to be resheetrocked - we had Sparky run a wire from the doorframe down to the basement. Plus another wire to where the chime would go inside of the foyer next to the door. Compared to the virtually complete rewiring of most of the house, this was really small potatoes. And, when the sheetrock was put up they drew the wires through so everything could eventually be hooked up.

Thursday, November 19. Sparky is here to do more of the electrical finish work, including the doorbell, outside button and chime hookup, as well as running a new line for the dryer which he couldn't tell was not powered by gas. Shaw calls me from home to say that Sparky doesn't want to install the recessed doorbell button I'd bought, as he'd have to drill a hole into the doorframe and doesn't know what he'll hit. It's a doorframe, I reply, plus he ran the wire so he knows what's back there. He wants to put in a surface-mount so he won't need to drill. Screw it, I reply, I'll put the damn button in myself. I hang up, and later learn that one of the carpenters overheard this discussion and put the button in for Sparky, thus sparing him the arduous task of drilling an approximately 1/2 inch hole.

Shaw calls back about an hour later to tell me that apparently the wire in the wall to the transformer (which Sparky didn't have with him and Shaw had to run out and buy) had somehow gotten cut in the basement, and a large hole had to be made in the foyer wall in order to run a new connection. Sparky had no idea how this had happened. Everything will be patched, but the walls are really beginning to look like a quilt.

That night I come home to see the extent of the respackled damage. I also note the cabinet light that was installed backwards, along with the motion detector that Sparky had hooked up to a wire I'd already shown him had been cut and needed to be replaced. I guess he'd forgotten - it had only been a week since we'd gone over it.

Later, Sparky calls to ask me if I'd seen a box of circuit breakers, since he thought he'd left them here and needs them for another job. No, they weren't here, I check.

Oy, nishtugadocht.