Thomas Wictor

When I was seventeen, I saw a documentary on the Yehudi Principle. Don’t ask me how, but I knew immediately that this would be a factor in my life. I filed it away in a corner of my mind, not knowing why. Yehudi is Hebrew for “Jew.” The documentary didn’t explain that; I know it because one of my classmates had been raised in Egypt and called Jews “Yahud.” Though a Southern California surfer, he squatted instead of sat. He was the first dedicated Jew-hater I met.

Yehudi was the code name for a secret US Navy camouflage program that began in the 1930s. I’ll describe the principle later. There’s no telling why they chose the Hebrew word for “Jew” to describe the principle discovered. I can’t help thinking that a Jewish officer gave it the name.

These are names of actual British Royal Navy ships.

Cockchafer
Great Harry
Mary Flyboat
Dreadful
Placentia
Hebe
Black Joke
Black Spread-Eagle
Spanker

When you learn what the Yehudi Principle does, I’m betting you’ll agree with me that the project was named by a Jew.

The last gastritis attack

I had another bout with gastritis on December 17, 2014. This time I had to go to the hospital because I couldn’t take the pain after ten hours. To my great shock, they admitted me in only twenty minutes. Within another fifteen I was heavily dosed with morphine.

Now I know what my death mask will be like. If you aren’t familiar with her, look up the photographer Diane Arbus. She got what she worked so hard to get, and then she didn’t want it. Oh well. Still, she would’ve loved Tim and me.

Here’s another “coincidence” that made me realize I needed a lifestyle change: I was put into the room that my mother stayed in as she waited to be admitted to the hospital for the final time. Tim stood beside her for twelve hours as she lay there unconscious. His hand was on her shoulder, letting her know that whatever happened, there was an ember of life there with her.

What’s funny about emergency departments in California is that they have this painted on every piece of equipment.

My father’s name. I lay in my Ed bed, so grateful that the pain and projectile vomiting had stopped.

Here’s a story that Tim gave me his permission to tell. Then I’ll explain the Yehudi Principle.

The day Mom died, two of her oldest friends came over to what was now Tim’s house. Neither of them had visited her that often in the hospital, so they didn’t appreciate the Grand Guignol aspects of the six months in which my mother starved herself to death and then tried to change her mind.

I was and remain angry at Mom’s friends for deserting her. It doesn’t matter to me that people are uncomfortable in hospitals. I think that kind of abandonment is unforgivable.

The way we found out that Mom had died was that a nurse called my house and said, “Ye mudda bean moobed to Code Blue.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It mean she bean moobed to Code Blue.”

“Is she still alive?”

And the nursed laughed. “Oh, I not allowed to say, sir.”

I called Tim but got no response. As I opened the back door, there was Tim, and I knew.

“She’s dead,” I said.

He looked very perplexed. “Her doctor called, and when I answered, he just said, ‘Yeah, it looks like her heart stopped.’ ‘Are we talking about my mother?’ I asked him. ‘Yeah.’ ‘So she’s dead.’ ‘Yeah.'”

And now at Mom’s house, these two old friends were laughing and laughing, already reminiscing, and I was thinking about joining them and saying, “Remember when she was semiconscious, screaming and crying, trying to take off the whooshing oxygen mask as the heart monitor beeped louder and more irregular beats until all the noise made her into a Last Exit concert?”

Tim excused himself and was gone for a couple of minutes. When he came back, he did the weirdest thing: In the middle of his stride, while talking, he slowed down to about half-speed. His voice didn’t get deeper or anything, but he ssstretcheddd eeeachh aaannnssswerrr ouuuttt ffforrrevvverrr.

He was slowly picking up familiar things, peering at them owlishly, and putting them down. Finally the two women left.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yyyesss.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Nnnooo. Iii’mmm goooiiinnnggg tooo taaake aaa nnnaaappp.”

I reluctantly left. When I returned a few hours later, we sat and went over the details of the terrible day.

“Did I imagine it,” Tim asked, “or were _______ and _______ here earlier?”

That scared me.

“They were here. You had long coversations with them. Then you starting moving and talking in slow motion. You don’t remember them?”

“Just hazily. It was the morphine. There was still a lot left from when Ed was dying, so I took that, along with his Oxycontin. I thought I was going to start screaming at those two women and smashing their heads, so I took Ed’s painkillers instead. I didn’t throw the drugs away after he died because I knew I’d need them.”

He’d kept them for eight months. Now that’s foresight.

The Yehudi Principle

German submarines—U-boats—wreaked havoc on Allied shipping in both world wars. U-boats had to spend most of their time on the surface, but they could see approaching bombers from twelve miles (nineteen kilometers) away. Someone discovered that if you put bright lights on the leading edge of the wings and around the nose and engine nacelles, the bomber could get within range of the submarine and attack it before it had time to submerge.

After I came home from the hospital, I lay in bed hearing Christmas carols being sung backwards.

Erif nepo na no gnitsaor stuntsehc
Eson ruoy ta gnippin tsorf kcaj
riohc a yb gnus gnieb slorac editeluy
Somikse ekil pu desserd sklof dna

Emos dna yekrut a swonk ydobyreve
Thgirb nosaes eht ekam ot pleh eoteltsim
Wolga lla seye rieht htiw stot ynit
Thginot peels ot drah ti dnif lliw

“Emos’ DNA yekrut a swonk, ydobyreve!”

Sounds like a command given by an insane Slavic dictator, doesn’t it? But I heard it as the song, complete with melody.

I realized I’d brought all my stomach pain down on myself by engaging this sort of person.

She’s one of the more vicious hominids I’ve ever encountered. Because I support Israel, that gives her license to make fun of me for being on psychotropic medication.

She also supports people committing crimes against me.

I deluded myself about Dani4Peace. Contact with her crowd is damaging. My friend Shimon has been asking me in his polite Jewish way for months to please stop engaging the Jew-haters, but I told myself I was finally fighting back, they’d declared war on me so they were getting a war in return, they didn’t bother me, etc. I was wrong, and Shimon was right.

These are monstrosities, creatures of pure negativity. They don’t argue in good faith, they have no factual knowledge, they’re motivated entirely by hate, and they don’t care about the cause for which they make so much noise. They live to inflict pain. I invited them into my life, and they poisoned me.

Look at the sour, spoiled, deeply unhappy mouth.

The camera doesn’t lie. Dani4Peace seems to be a failed actress who latches onto any celebrity in a doomed attempt to get some sort of D-list social-media career going.

BREAKING NEWS!

I’ve had several contacts with Roseanne Barr, who’s a staunch supporter of Israel. It would never occur to me to try to ride her coattails to some twilight version of fame. I’ve had many, many private contacts with people who aren’t entertainers but who are household names. Though I’d already planned to never reveal these communications, now I have a name for why I do things the way I do, and it was given to me when I was seventeen years old.

The Yehudi Principle. Hiding in plain sight. Taking an entirely different approach. Camouflaging yourself by becoming so bright that the two-bit, dismal, crazed, vile enemy can’t even see you. No more engagement. The Yehudi Principle is about ascendency and doing the unexpected.

It had to have been named by a Jewish officer!

Update

A Jewish reader links me to “Visibility Studies and Some Applications in the Field of Camouflage.”

Who was the little man who wasn’t there? The Jewish violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

The catchphrase “Who’s Yehoodi?” (or, alternatively, “Who’s Yehudi?”) originated when violinist Yehudi Menuhin was a guest on the popular radio program of Bob Hope, where sidekick Jerry Colonna, apparently finding the name itself humorous, repeatedly asked “Who’s Yehudi?” Colonna continued the gag on later shows even though Menuhin himself was not a guest, turning “Yehudi” into a widely understood late 1930s slang reference for a mysteriously absent person. The United States Navy chose the name “Project Yehudi” for an early 1940s precursor to stealth technology.

I like it. The little man who wasn’t there. I’m him.