Dov is Hebrew for bear

We were visiting friends of my wife in Amstelveen. An older couple, retirees like us.
Both came from poor working class homes. The husband had started his working life as an assistant to a watchmaker. The wife had started work in a hat store after leaving school.

They had worked themselves up the career ladder. He had become an adviser (for what I do not know) with the Dutch Ministry of Education. She was the craft teacher at the primary school where my wife had also worked.

They were loyal lifelong supporters of the Dutch Labour Party. The husband was (he died later of bowel cancer) the dominant half. It was such dominance that I mused about the possibility of kinky sexual behaviour.
That probably says more about me than about them.

He was sitting on the couch smoking his pipe, a glass of whisky in one hand, listening to some avant-garde cacophony of sounds. That was conform the image he always tried to project.
We were sitting around a table with my wife's girlfriend. She had drunk a bit too much wine and was in a happy mood.

My wife told her that my name Dov is Hebrew for bear and then proceeded to tell the story of the first time she saw me on my kibbutz:
She was sunbathing near the swimming pool with her travelling companion. The swimming pool, like the rest of the kibbutz, was built on strategically higher ground. They looked down and saw a big cloud of sand approaching.
What is it?
At a certain moment the cloud started to fade and the surrounding air began to shimmer, like it does in the desert.

The first thing they saw emerging from the shimmering air was me, riding without a saddle and stirrups on a black Arabian horse. I was only wearing shorts and sandals.
Behind me was a large flock of sheep.

They looked at each other and said, “I want him”. They made a bet about it.
My wife ends the story with, “I won”, and I usually smile sheepishly.

After my wife had finished the story, her girlfriend turned towards me wide-eyed.
She pointed at me, shouted “you?” and burst out laughing.

It must have been some 45 years ago that I met Gidon again. He said he had spoken to Shmuel (who later became some kind of guru in Australia) who had mentioned me.
I asked, what did he say?
Gidon replied, he said he had heard you had become a Dutch teddy bear.