Of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments of the Jewish religion, number 207 is this: “You must love the convert.” Astrid Weissman, like me, for all her earnest, eager, excessive energy, formally converted and entered the tribe of Judaism, and her commitment should be lauded, not derided. Long live the passionate Jew-by-choice. May she never feel guilty for buying oversized Judaica or awkward for her limited mastery of Yiddish. Wherever we will go, she will go. Our people will be her people and our God her God. Amen.

The sweet scent of peach lemonade and vodka seeps from my pores as the temperature rises near the bar at the back of the Starland Ballroom. Oversized flannels hang off the bodies of girls wearing ripped skinny jeans, and a crowd of t-shirts with different tour dates printed on their backs moves in waves – to a standing spot, to the bar, and back again. I hold my plastic cup close to my chest, careful to sip the vodka slowly; I need to be able to stand to see the stage. An advertisement for IHOP flashes across the projector screen, and the crowd roars, a symphony of chants honoring buttermilk pancakes. I clap, too, imagining a side of crispy bacon, a cheese omelette, and hot coffee running down my freshly sore throat when the concert is over.

Back in 2007, when the seventh and final Harry Potter book came out, there was nothing but grief and regret once “the truth” about Snape was revealed. The character had already acquired an icon status that few in the series had managed to, when in 2011 the last film came out and - greatly due the late Alan Rickman’s breath-taking performance- there was yet another wave of sympathy for Snape as those who had not read the book realised Snape was with the good guys all along.

I kept it mostly to early Beatles stuff at that age. I was too young for the drugs and weird outfits that came later, some 25 years before. Once, as I was checking out library books about the band – I just grabbed them without looking too closely – I discovered one that detailed their sexual escapades. I read a passage about passing girls around from bed to bed – that was as far as I got before something about the appearance of the book tipped my mom off to its contents, and it disappeared. She firmly grabbed the wheel and turned the car around before I could travel too far down that road.

When Dillon offers his thanks for the scorpion-plucking, Mac responds with one word, “Anytime,” shaping it into a menacing whisper-growl, as cool as mist rising from ice. It’s the first indication that things may not be what they seem. Mac doesn’t trust Dillon – correctly, it turns out, as Dillon has, with typical CIA wiliness, brought this team to Central America on false pretenses. Later, when Dutch learns of the betrayal, he asks Dillon, “What happened to you?”

“I woke up,” Dillon says. “Why don’t you?”

Six hours into my Zoom classes, my body goes upright fetal and my shoulders slouch, orphans huddled around the fake fire of the computer screen.

Remember Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave?” Remember what an apple did to Adam and Eve?

Remember the apple and Snow White?

“I ate civilization,” Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World, “and it poisoned me.”

It’s what I feel: poisoned.

I pull my spine up and back, up and back. My right side pings.