My First Bat Mitzvah Party

By Jeremy Moses | August 5, 2010

The other day, I wrote about vomiting at my bar mitzvah party. Not my finest hour.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about other stories from bar/bat mitzvah parties. Maybe next week I’ll write about the time a bar mitzvah dancer put my head in her chest to convince me to go to the dance floor (you read that right), but today I wanna talk about my first ever bat mitzvah party.

If my memory serves me correctly, the first bat mitzvahs in my classes started to take place during the 6th grade. As was the policy at my school, all kids in my class were invited to all the parties. So, even though I had never really said much to my classmate Courtney, I was invited to her party.

When I got the invitation I was confronted with an issue I had never really thought of before. My parents informed me that Courtney’s party would all but certainly not be kosher. Since I was 11, and couldn’t conceive of the idea of going to a party and NOT eating (I feel the same way at 24, by the way), I wanted to figure out a way to get food of my own.

I remember my mom telling me to just call up Courtney and explain to her that I keep kosher and would require kosher food. This was out of the question. Not only did I barely know Courtney (she was super cool, and based off of my recent Facebook stalking, is still super cool), but to call her up to tell her that I was kosher would have been the most embarrassing thing of all time.

So instead, I got my mom to call her mom. And all worked out…or so I thought.

I get to the hotel where the party is being held, and am eventually greeted by Courtney’s mother. She was very nice and told me that she had specially ordered a catered meal for me. Well, dinner rolls around and all my friends are getting their plates of hot dogs, chicken fingers and fries. I wait patiently…and nothing.

Though I was a little shy, I muster up the courage to tell the waitress that I didn’t get my meal. She comes back a couple of minutes later with AIRPLANE FOOD.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Airplane food is gross. And kosher airplane food is REALLY gross. Whatever though. I’ll suck it up. I take a couple of bites, and realize that the center of my meal had not been defrosted. My meat loaf was frozen. I decide it isn’t worth it to find the waitress again because I didn’t even like the meat loaf in the first place.

To make matters worse, they bring out dessert…and it’s ice cream.

Again…NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I just had (frozen) meat so now I can’t even have the dairy dessert.

I don’t remember much more about that evening, but I do know that that was the last time I told a girl in my class that I wanted a kosher meal.

Any one else have bar/bat mitzvah party horror stories?