Deep Thoughts, With Chaviva E.

As I sit here, watching television, nursing a stomach thing slash head cold thing, unable to consume anything but fluids and crackers, I'm beginning to notice how un-Jewish and uber-treyfy commercials are.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't expect lots of Manischewitz commercials or odes to kashruth. The Hebrew National commercials are hilarious enough for me. But the amount of fast-food and dining out restaurant commercials that advertise shrimp and bacon double whoppers as big as your head slowly has begun to shock me. Every commercial highlights bacon-wrapped shrimp or bacon double whatsits or scallops or ... you get the drift. I never realized how pervasive seafood and bacon burgers were until, well, I was really going kosher. For years I've not eaten shellfish or pork or beef/dairy. It's only in the past year or few months that I'd started keeping kosher in the home, only eating kosher meat, really going the whole 613 yards. So it isn't like I was salivating over shrimp last year, or even five years ago. But it's just now that I'm realizing how pervasive the shrimp consumption really is!

What accounts for this odd realization?

It's almost like how you wake up one day and suddenly, everything is green. That happened last week. Suddenly, the entire world was blossoming and green was the primo color. How weird. Does the brain delay such realizations? Or are we just not prepared for such things visually? Maybe we're mentally aware that everyone else in the world eats treyf or that things have gone green because it's spring, but our eyes haven't caught up with our brains?