ELUL 29 · DAY 29 of 29 · SEPTEMBER 9, 2026

If you want the story that shaped me, I don’t need to reach back to childhood. I need to reach back to yesterday. A boat line. Because I skipped it. Yup. Guilty as charged.

Call it inverted Larry David syndrome: I didn’t get wronged; I did the wronging—and I’ve spent 24 hours marinating in guilt, from which even my talent for rationalization cannot talk me down.

Friends near the front waved us over. It was a violation of the Eleventh Commandment—Thou Shalt Not Skip the Line—but I put my head down and followed them, hoping no one would recognize me. We cut about 30 people. Of course I was recognized. Of course I was called out.

And here’s the twist: it isn’t the public humiliation haunting me. It’s knowing I made the wrong call before I stepped onto the dock. What kind of schmuck skips a line? Not me. Or so I liked to think.

So now what—penance? A little tzedakah to balance the cosmic ledger? Do I surrender my first-class seat? How many hot coals do I walk before the universe calls it even?

Twenty minutes. That’s what I saved. Twenty minutes in exchange for a guilt shaping up to outlast the vacation. Funny how twenty minutes can expose a lifetime’s worth of values.

Underneath it all: I’m just a guy who cut a boat line and can’t stop paying for it.