"You're going to hell, because you are Jewish."
She was about 6 years old when these words were spoken to her. The kid in her class every year thereafter would give her an extremely religious Christmas card, and sometimes speak to her in nice tones before ending their sentence with "...it's really too bad you are so nice, because you are going to hell."
One year she and her mom found the most religious Hannukah card they could find, and she gave it to him. The cards stopped altogether after that year. They never really spoke again, but they lived in the same neighborhood and heard rumors.
His parents split up, his mom got lipo and married a doctor and ran away, never speaking to her children again.
Today her mother got an updated on the family. The boy who thought she was going to hell had gotten married and named one of his children...after her. He knew no one else by that name, most likely his whole life.
She wondered what that was a metaphor for.
