Parents Lose Minds at Daughter's Wedding
The Daily Probe - February 28, 2000
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ANATEVKA, RUSSIA (DPI) - The wedding yesterday of Zeedel Schlepstein and the tailor Motel Khamzoil was marred by an attack of dementia which struck the bride's parents. Near the end of the Jewish nuptial ceremony, father Tevya Schlepstein suddenly doubted the identity of his own daughter and bellowed, "Is THIS the little girl I carried?" His wife, Golda, then mistook the grown-up tailor for a child, and sang out, "Is this the little boy at play?" Witnesses say that both parents then seemed to go back in time ten or twelve years, declaring loudly, "I don't remember growing older. When did they?"
Town butcher Lazar Wolf, who doubles as town doctor, speculated that the strange behavior was the result of the stress of havingfive daughters, each requiring a dowry come wedding time. Overwork and malnutrition may have also contributed to the altered mental state. Said Doctor Wolf, "This is not the first time Tevya has lost his mind in public. On his good days, he thinks he has a direct line to God, and just the other day he was stomping around in his rat hole of a barn, jabbering some diggah diggah deedle dum nonsense and singing about what a rich guy he is. He is not rich, you know. He is a milkman." The wedding was completed, but only after Tevya and Golda engaged in a shouted argument about whether the sun was rising or setting.
- Reported by Chris Jones
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