We Sisters are pleased to share some of the silent, inanimate objects in our lives that schmooze with us

They can be replaced, they don’t feel anything, they can’t speak. They’re just things. Inanimate objects.

So why are there some things that we talk to? Objects we look for frantically when we misplace them? Items we give names to? Things that make us cry when they have to be thrown away?

Maybe it’s because some things tell us about ourselves, become part of our identity. Some items trigger memories. Some lifeless, silent object can tell us a story.

Whether the object was built by a carpenter, crafted by a goldsmith, or even hammered out by an inmate in a prison workshop…. we Sisters are pleased to share some of the silent, inanimate objects in our lives that schmooze with us. The things that tell us stories — if we listen closely.

Marcia fights the battle of…

OY VEY Versus the MVA

Why am I crying at the Maryland Motor Vehicles Administration? It’s just a license plate. Or is it?

It started 30 years ago, when my late husband got me a gift for a milestone birthday (I’m not saying which). Something I’d been hinting at for years: vanity plates for my car. Plates that summed up my life outlook: OY VEY.

Sheldon would tease that it sounded kvetchy, especially compared to his own upbeat BITOCHN tags. “It’s all in how you say it,” I’d respond, “With a whine? or with a chuckle!”

Over the years, most people agreed with my chuckle perspective. Waiting at a red light, drivers in the lane beside me would often roll down their window to make witty comments. At gas stations, drivers pumping gas behind me would ask if they could take a picture. Once, in a parking lot, a man in a suit asked permission to photograph the plates so he could show it “to all my Jewish colleagues at work.”

I’ve probably avoided dozens of parking and speeding tickets over the years because of cops with a sense of humor.

OY VEY was transferred five or six times as we upgraded to new used cars. It always proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Those cars usually started out in decent condition, but degenerated to oy vey shape by the time we were ready to move up.

Once, when we graduated to a Town & Country minivan, we gave our old Taurus station wagon to our son, then attending Chofetz Chaim in Queens. To our mutual dismay, the MVA wouldn’t allow us to transfer OY VEY. I felt as if I’d handed over my identity. My son Nachum just felt mortified.

To make matters worse, Nachum came out of yeshivah one morning to find… the plates had been stolen! We figured they were hanging in some college student’s dorm room. And — adding insult to injury — since the plates were stolen, the MVA wouldn’t let me get the same ones. It took years before they allowed me to regain my identity.

My MVA battles didn’t end there. Early in the pandemic, I got an ominous email: There was a “flag” on my registration record. After weeks of clicking through their user-hostile website, I figured out what the flag was: My husband had the nerve to pass away. His name needed to be removed from the car’s title.

Of course, I had no idea where Sheldon had stored the title document.