“We all paid our way... how could they just tag along for free?”

Ahuva: If you don’t pay, you can’t join. It’s that simple.

Gittel: Don’t arrange events in public areas and expect children not to come.

Ahuva

The game show guy was fully booked, the clown wouldn’t do a night show in the country, and whoever suggested a concert clearly had no idea how much these singers charge.

I hit pay dirt with the magician guy though, the one Chaya Esther had suggested.

He had the date free, and his price… well, it wouldn’t be too astronomical by the time we divided it between all the families in our section of the bungalow colony.

I posted a message on our group chat: Good news! Mike the Magician can do Motzaei Shabbos Nachamu. Will cost around $150 per family. Let me know if I should go ahead and book.

The replies came in quickly; a bunch of thumbs-up and other happy emojis.

Wow! Thanks Ahuva

Amazing thanks for arranging

Sure no prob

Nice, but not enough. I wasn’t going to give my credit card details until I confirmed that we’d be able to cover the costs between us. I’ve been in this colony for years, I’m usually the one who organizes events for our section, and I’ve learned from experience that everything has to be figured out up front.

I sent a bunch of private messages and jotted down a quick list as each family confirmed. It didn’t take long; we’re a close-knit bunch and we’ve been doing these kinds of things together for the past few years.

I left Gittel until last, when the costs were anyway pretty much covered by the rest of the families. Then, because I knew that I had to at least invite her, I sent a quick text:

We’re bringing in a magician to do a show for the kids on motzaei shabbos nachamu. It’s $150 per fam if you want to join.

It was a while before I received a reply.

$150 is too much for us, sorry.

Exactly what I’d expected.

No problem, I wrote back.

Well, that was done. Now it was time to figure out the pizza party for after the show.

Let me put it out there: this wasn’t about the Nestenbaums not having money.

Of course, you can never really know and yada yada yada, but here was a family who came to the mountains every summer, they had nice clothing, kids in camp, spent plenty of money on cleaning help and barbecues and other stuff. And you know how colonies work, everyone knows everything, and Gittel’s husband owned a successful business, it wasn’t like they were strapped for money.

It was just, somehow, they were always refusing to join anything we did as a group.