Going to shul in the morning sucks

I’m sitting in shul slumped in my chair. I look like a drunk with a bad hangover. By this juncture, I’m wondering what on earth possessed me to get out of bed this morning. Sure, my guilty conscience, ahem the yetzer tov awoke me from some awesome dream and encouraged me to get to shul. I’m not willing to believe that women, no matter how high their spiritual madreiga may be, actually volunteer to do such madness. 

As I look around I realize that I’m number 11, there are few worse feelings that getting to shul to make the minyan and realizing that you’re not the tenth man and they already have a minyan. I think the feeling falls in line with missing a kick ass meat cholent because you decided to eat at the token left wing modern orthodox family in the shul who was known to have milchigs for lunch. I guess you can compare the feeling to getting up for class, only to realize it’s Sunday.

Number 11 sucks, it really does, unless that fellow without the tefillin on isn’t Jewish. Hmm…I wonder if I was the tenth guy after all. Just as I think it, God hooks a brother up, the chazzan turns around, the rabbi nods and kadesh yusum begins. If not for the older folk davening for their long deceased relatives I would have had to wait to baruch hu to figure out if waking up was worth it. Actually it still wasn’t worth it, sure my prayers, half slobbered/half asleep with no kavannah are supposedly answered faster in a minyan, but my prayers weren’t worth shit today. I didn’t even have the energy for a mild shuckel, I stood in place with one crooked knee waiting for the fast Israeli to finish so no one would think that I was just standing for show.

I finish shemona esrei slump in my chair and then my replacement shows up, an actual eleventh man walks in. Of course, I’m not the only one to see reprieve. Suddenly it’s a mad race between a bunch of guys suddenly taking off their tefillin to get the F outa there. Looks like I ain’t the only one happy to see number 11 and trying to get out of shul.