*She's* your daughter?!!!"

One of the fine folks I hang out with at Tamar's Thursday night Israeli folk dance session at the JCC in Manhattan is a friendly soul and a bit of a kook, which makes her just my kind. (Why else would I have married a punster?) She's also a hard-core folk dancer. She goes folk dancing when her foot hurts, when her back hurts, when she's exhausted from work. She even goes folk dancing when she has other things to do.

"I gave up my daughter's concert tonight for this. She's playing at Joe's Pub in the Village."

"What does she play?"

"She's a singer."

"Oh, neat."

"She's also [plays a couple chords of "air guitar"]."

"Oh, so she's a singer and a guitarist."

"Yeah, she also plays the oud."

"Neat!"

"You know her. Pharoah's Daughter."

"She's your daughter?!!!"

So lemme get this straight--I've been hanging out for something like a year with Basya Schechter's mother?!

She's threatening to stop coming to Tamar's session because they do too many couples dances, which she's not crazy about. I certainly hope she doesn't carry out her threat, because we enjoy each other's senses of humor.

In between dances, I tell her, "My son's a physicist, your daughter's a singer. We folk dancers really know how to pop 'em out."

She cracks up.