Dad found a career that perfectly suited his personality. He owned a store called Crazy Sophie’s Factory Outlet. Much like a certain “Eddie” of legend, who perceived the unlikely connection between psychiatric disorder and retail sales volume, Dad did his own radio ads as “Crazy Donald.” They were highly spirited—and like everything else that came from his mouth, unintelligible— pitches which went something like, “When I see the prices at the mawl I just want to vawmit. Hi. I’m Crazy Donald, Crazy Sophie’s husband.”
Dad would list all the brands of jeans he had in his store— brands I’ve never since heard of, like Unicorn. At the end he would say either,
“So, spend you-ah time at the mawl, spend you-ah money at Crazy Sophie’s!”
or:
“So if you cay-ah enough to buy the very best—but yo-uah too CHEAP, come to Crazy Sophie’s!”
In fact, Dad was not Crazy Sophie’s husband. Sophie did not exist. He invented her. He wanted a woman’s name because he was selling women’s clothes. Dad’s mother, my Nana, Rose, yelled at him after he named the store, insisting, “You named the store after my friend Sophie Moskowitz, and she will be very insulted!” Dad insisted, “I did not name the sto-ah aftah Sophie Moskowitz. If I named the sto-ah aftah Sophie Moskowitz, I would have named it Ugly Sophie’s.”
- An excerpt from Sarah Silverman new book The Bedwetter.
