FOLG MIR A GANG

Have you ever uttered a word in a foreign language and realized the person you said it to may have no idea what you’re saying? Did you fully understand what you were saying? Could you spell the word?

Thanks to the internet, there is so much help with things like translating foreign words. When I was growing up, my parents often spoke Yiddish, their first language, so that their four children didn’t know what they were discussing. There were certain words repeatedly said that gained our attention.

Recently, at the dentist, he suggested that I see an endodontist if my tooth pain didn’t stop (it didn’t and, I did end up in the office of an endodontist). He threw out the names of several qualified clinicians he works with and the towns where they practice. When he listed outskirts such as Morristown and Clifton, I automatically uttered, as my mother would say, “folg mir a gang.” My dentist, a Jewish man from my era, smiled. Then I left.

I laughed to myself on the way home (since the pain lessened with fluoride coating), wondering if he knew what I meant. My thought was reminiscent of my mother, in a disgusted manner asking in Yiddish, “where are you running, that’s out of the way?” I knew what she meant but couldn’t put the definition into words.

According to what I found on the internet, the meaning of the term folg mir a gang is “it’s quite a long way.” And, from the website of the endodontist, whom he mentioned was in my neighborhood, she met the qualifications and the commute.

So, to my son-in-law, Eric, Jewish with no Yiddish vocabulary, this is your “word” of the day…folg mir a gang. We’ll have to speak one-on-one, so you learn the inflection with which to say the expression. It’s all in the delivery.

Update:

At the endodontist, she drilled and saw that my tooth cracked straight across and was abscessed. After recommending to pull the tooth, fortunately, her partner, a periodontist, Dr. LaMorte, was in and available to pull that back bottom molar while the area was still numb.

It turns out that the endodontist and I know a wad of people in common; we each raised our children in South Orange. What was most interesting was when the periodontist, knowing that I live practically around the corner from their offices, asked me where I was from originally. My answer, “Roselle,” which is in adjoining Union County, sparked a bell, and he said that his son teaches art in Roselle.

Although I was up all night in excruciating toothache pain, I quickly adjusted and asked which school. He said one of the elementary schools, but he couldn’t think of the name. I said that I attended Lincoln School, which is now the Polk School. “That’s it,” he exclaimed! I grabbed my cell phone and showed him my blog post dated August 3, 2021, More Lincoln School Memories.

To cap it off, before he pulled my tooth, I asked the good doctor if he happened to be related to Susan LaMorte, who I worked with many years ago. Thinking for sure that would be a “no,” uh, “bingo!” “Susan,” he replied, “is my first cousin.”

Maybe knowing bits of a foreign language is a catalyst to my ability to make connections.