Here are some thoughts that came to me as we were sitting around the table on a Fri. night, Barbara and I, with a woman we’ve known for many years and her twenty-year-old daughter. Why not share my musings with those assembled near and far?

When we established the Oy Vey Club as an official entity (with me as a candidate member), it never occurred to us to have formal qualifications for admission. You had to complain more than you’d want to, more than you had ever imagined would be necessary, but that’s as far as it went. As far as any of us are aware, there is no such thing as a kvetchometer to measure your level of discomfort over a period of time or an audiometer for how loud you can groan, ‘Oy Vey.’ If you say you are sore or in pain, who am I to say you’re not? Come on in. Just don’t spread it around. I got my own tzouris.

What we hadn’t considered is the possibility that someone would be overqualified. How is that possible, you ask. Most of us will be shlepping along at the same level of oyveyness (or so we hope!) next year. Some of us may even wind up in better shape. One of our friends is getting her knee replaced, and there is a real chance that she will soon become more mobile than she was before. I’m certainly hoping that a year from now I won’t have a catheter, and my umbilical hernia will be repaired. Hope springs eternal…

But for our dinner guest’s Ex back in The States, who will soon be using the latest technology, a dialysis machine that you can hookup at night at home, or a friend, three of whose four heart valves are leaking, or someone else who is doing chemo, let’s hope that they won’t be any the worse for wear a year from now, but we can’t feel as confident as we’d like about their future wellbeing.

For all of these friends, and the many more whose health is truly fragile, for whom a well-placed oy vey doesn’t quite do the job, we have been obliged reluctantly to create another organization, The Oy Vey Iz Mir Club. One may slide unknowingly into the original group, or one might spend months or years ignoring the symptoms (as in, Nothing to worry about, dear; I’ll be fine). But when you have to add the iz mir? You don’t want to be there, and no matter how good you are at pretending, you know for a fact you’re where you never wanted to be. Such is life.

What happens if you feel you’re on the cusp? You’re not exactly sure where you fit in, or your situation might be fluid. Maybe sometime in recent memory, with the condition you have, you would have been a goner. But with the latest advances, you can expect to be on your toes and in sound mind for a few more decades. For those out there wavering, we’re offering a third option, Vey iz mir without the oy.

We thought we had all our bases covered. But we had, sitting across the table that Fri. eve., a twenty-year-old young lady, with a special dietary need. Not only did she have allergies – even to cats, and she loves cats – but they recently figured out that her stomach issues were caused – as with so many others – by the big, bad gluten. (Celiac alert!) No problem. I’m at the shuk on Thurs., and I’ll walk over to Judith, a store on Agrippas that has right-out-of-the-oven breads and cakes made without the cursed ingredient. Feeding her was no problem, but the question remains: what oy vey type club does she qualify for – if any? Thank God, she’s nowhere near the iz mir level.

When we established the original club, we gave no thought to age restrictions. Obviously, one is never too old to become a member. But can a candidate be too young? It’s almost comical to imagine a teenager walking around, kvetching oy vey, this hurts, that hurts. But our young lady’s symptoms were the real thing. She is entitled to some respect, a group of her own, a junior league of some kind.

And then it occurred to me; we were using archaic terminology. No self-respecting whippersnapper would be caught dead oy vey-ing. We would need some contemporary lingo to encapsulate their issues. Unable to come up with anything appropriate on my own, I turned – where else? – to Google. Modern day equivalent of oy vey. What I got was not what I expected, a discussion about if a non-Jew gives voice to an oy vey, is that ‘cultural appropriation?’ (You weren’t expecting that, were you?) All we can do is hide our heads and utter a collective OY VEY, because if there was ever a need for a cry of despair at where things are going, it is here and now.