“I was on kitchen duty with another volunteer, a tiny lady from Canada who looked like a storybook drawing of everyone’s favorite grandma. An 18-year-old soldier swaggered in—Mr. ‘I Speak English, I Know Everything’. He grabbed a cup of coffee and came over to ask how much the government paid us to come work on the base. We told him we’re volunteers, and we paid our own way to come to Israel.
While that was sinking in, that little Canadian grandma got up in the kid’s face (she barely came up to his chest) and said, ‘You wanna know the best part? Back home in Canada, I have a cleaning lady to do this! I don’t mop my own floors. I pay my own way to come to Israel to mop YOUR floors!’ That macho kid put down his coffee, got tears in his eyes and said, ‘Thank you, thank you. We love you. You’re crazy, but we love you!’”