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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| The Book of Zern The Chapter Following The Last One 1. These are the words of Linda, Queen and Groundskeeper of our people—even the YaYa Zern. 2. Speaking forth those words to them that will hear, in this season of both Internet shopping and good-will-wishing under the mistletoe kissing. 3. Yea, the days of our tribe did pass away this selfsame year as if in a dream—fueled by both: food that is fast and takeout Fridays. 4. For I did yet hearken unto the nagging of my children and did continue to seek learning and knowledge—even at Rollins College, an Ivey league school or at least a school with Ivey that groweth upward upon the bricks of the walls. 5. And the Queen’s children, even my own seed, did covet much of my excellent bedroom furniture and my fine credit rating. 6. Surely, I did chastise them and say to them, doth the Queen have need of another pillow top mattress? Or doth the Queen not have power to write much of their deeds and doings and make it known to all the people round about? 7. I say nay, or yea, or I shalt get back to thee. 8. And Sherwood also called the King and First Rocker of Babies—in that not one of our people, could maketh a baby cease its wailing and sleep sound as he doth—did continue to tap much upon his computer keys in the language of acronym. 9. For he did work much for the Babylonians in the land of the mighty lakes. 10. Having gone forth, both Sherwood and his father, to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to retrieve SSG Aric Zern’s Jeep Sport Wrangler and drive it forth to our own land, so that when returning from the mountain wars of Afghanistan, Aric might come forth to claim his red Jeep chariot. 11. Likewise, I did go forth, driving the red Jeep to the city gates and Wal-Mart and Gold’s Gym—while playing loudly of the drum and harp and thinking on sons who fight in far and distant lands. 12. And Adam, even the youngest son said unto the world, I do make an end of learning in the spring, then my life will be as the voice of the Turtledove. And we, even his family, did mock him to laughter, but he did withstand all our mocking. 13. He being strengthened in all things by his goodly wife, even Sarah, she having already made an end of her learning at BYU. 14. And Heather did bring forth one Zachary called Flap Jack and Maren did bring forth Reagan called after a Republican, with their husband’s, one Phillip of Bountiful and T. J. of Titusville. 15. And I said unto the daughters of our tribe, gird they sword upon they thigh and tighten all thy buttons for the children doth require thee to be stronger, longer than they. 16. For they did number seven: Zoe the Woman-Child (7); Conner the Much Forgiven (4); Emma the Careful (5); Kip the Daring (2) and Sadie the Dramatic (2) and, of course, Zachary and Reagan (4 and 5 months in their first year.) 17. Thus saith the YaYa, that I make an end of these words for this merry season of Christmas and doth wish goodness and joy on all those who dare to pick roses despite the thorns. This old world sure is fine and mighty hard to beat. With every rose you get a thorn, but ain’t the roses sweet. Anonymous |
| A full-grown American alligator raced across the road, right in front of a taxicab full of tourists. I was driving my husband to the Orlando International Airport at the time. “Hey, wasn’t that an alligator running across the road?” I asked. “Yep.” “Can you imagine being in a taxi on your first trip to Florida and seeing an alligator run across the road?” “Yep.” Sherwood doesn’t let a whole bunch excite him. Which is a good quality, because when our boys were young it was nothing for us to have to make strange alligator related rules, like: “Aric, you are not allowed to ask Adam, your smaller and younger brother, to jump on the back of alligators that you catch on fishing poles.” Or, “Adam, you are never, ever to do anything that your brother tells you to do—EVER.” Occasionally, before nodding off to sleep, I would ask my husband, “Do you think Aric is trying to kill Adam via an alligator related hunting accident?” He would say, “Yep.” Alligators are a real conservation success story. On the verge of disappearing into the endless kiosk of designer handbags and boots, they’ve come back to threaten the safety of every poodle in the state of Florida. Or as we like to say, “You can hardly spit around here without an alligator crawling into the damp spot. They’re everywhere.” In Florida if there’s water, eventually, an alligator is going to crawl into it or through it on its way to a better damp spot or date. We lived on a small lake which forced us to develop the Zern Family ‘Gator Capture and Relocation Program. The program worked liked this: 1) Adam would mimic the grunt of a baby alligator (no one can grunt like my Adam.) Adam’s ‘gator grunt attracted adult alligators the way farting the alphabet attracts Cub Scouts. 2) Alligators would glide in like heat seeking missiles. 3) Aric would then flip a bit of a chicken’s inside parts, on a hook, in front of the cruising reptile (no one can fish with chicken gizzards like my Aric.) Worked every time or just about. 4) And then Aric would yell. “Adam, jump on the alligator’s back.” After that they’d tape the ‘gator’s mouth shut, heft it in their arms, and bring it into our bedroom to show Mom and Dad. We would be napping at the time. Another Zern family rule stated, “Never, ever bring alligators in to wake up Mommy and Daddy from their nap, because Mommy hates to wet the bed. (It’s so important to explain rules to children, don’t you think?) At this point Sherwood would roll out of bed, muttering things. “It’s like living in an episode of . . . flipping . . . wild . . . flipping . . . kingdom.” Making the boys toss the alligator in the back of our truck, he’d then help them take it down the road to release it in someone else’s pond. I would remain at home stripping sheets off the bed. Let me shatter some alligator myths for my friends around the global water cooler. Alligators are not ambitious. If you fall into their mouths, they might take advantage of the situation. But they don’t plot. Alligators are not like us; they are cold-blooded and the reason that they’re hanging out in the parking lot of the Winn Dixie is to get warm, not stalk you or your groceries. Alligators are not mean. I once saw a baby alligator riding through the swamp on the nose of a gigantic Mommy alligator. How heart warming is that? Of course, when the Mommy alligator started swimming toward us the park ranger screamed, “Run!” Alligators are not clever. Adam and Aric outwitted them on a regular basis with a fake ‘gator call and some chicken livers. My husband flies to Detroit, Michigan for work and takes taxi cabs from the airport to his hotel. I asked him, “What would run across the road in front of your taxicab in Detroit?” He said, “An out-of-work auto worker.” Scary. Linda (‘Gator Bait) Zern |
| I flipped my hair out of my eyes with a light, youthful flip. I was attempting the haircut walk-in. “Would it be possible to get a hip, cool haircut today?” “Certainly we can fit you in, but there might be a little wait,” the stylist said, checking the grand book of haircut secrets. “And will you be wanting the fifty-five and over discount?” I was stunned, shocked, dismayed, and startled. “Who me? Fifty-five? No, no way. And I’m not pregnant either.” There it was—my first brush with mortality, the dreaded senior citizen’s discount inquiry. I’m not fifty-five but some of my wrinkles are ninety. I blame Botox. It’s hard to find a forehead that isn’t lying anymore. “Look!” The foreheads are all saying. “I’m only twenty-six.” I believe I have one of the last honest foreheads of this century. The wrinkles are real and the emotions that created them are real. It’s an expressive face, my face, which means that it moves a lot. Living with my face is like living with a circus clown, or at this age, a circus clown’s grandmother. If I had Botox, my entire head would turn to frozen stone—not unlike my heart. My wrinkles have come home to roost, are here to stay, and they all have a perfectly good story to tell. The four parallel lines that look like canyons dug into the landscape of my forehead I like to call my Shock and Awe Wrinkles. As in, “I’m shocked that you thought putting the cat in a pillow case and lowering her out of the second story window was a good idea.” Or “Awww come on; you put peanut butter where? Show me.” These forehead wrinkles also double as my Ask a Stupid Question Wrinkles. As in, “Is that Barbie doll smoking a cigarette?” Or better yet, “Please tell me you are not making Barbie porn with the family video camera?” The two slashing wrinkles that groove the bridge of my nose I like to call The Mark of the Oldest Child. These wrinkles appeared the day I found Aric, my oldest child, dangling upside down by one foot from his grandfather’s RV. He told me he wanted to learn to repel off stuff and the RV was the tallest thing he could find in flat Florida. Now he dangles out of helicopters for the US military. The wrinkle deepens. The nest of cross-hatched lines around my eyes were created by watching 1,247 Little League games without sunglasses in sunny Florida. The marionette lines around my mouth are inherited. I got them from my mother, who got them from her mother and so forth. It’s hard to argue with genetic baggage. The wrinkles on my cheeks are my very own. They’re dimple wrinkles, and they’re from laughing. They’re from hearing my husband (at public swimming facilities) say things like, “Quick! Everybody run. Our baby just pooped in the hot tub.” And then running, only to find out that nobody pooped in anything. Actually, that’s the problem; I don’t have a heart of stone. Like you, I feel everything, and everything I feel comes pounding out of my heart, surges through the pores of my forehead, and drips right off the end of my deeply lined chin. It seems odd that the goal of our society is to make our faces look as if they’ve never felt anything, or seen anything, or been anywhere. My face isn’t fifty-five years old yet, but it’s seen some stuff. And it’s a good face, wrinkles and all. Linda (Face It) Zern |
| My youngest child, Adam, got married September 8th, making my nest officially empty—not one child with my DNA living anywhere on or near my property—not in a bedroom, mother-in-law quarters, barn, or in a tent next to the Butterfly Palm in the front pasture. But don’t worry about me. I’m getting a dog, and I’m naming the dog Adam. I’ve gone back to college, which means I have homework now, so while Adam’s been on his honeymoon I swept all his junk into a laundry basket and stole his desk, oh wait . . . my desk. Now it’s just me and my darling husband of twenty-eight years. Oh, and the dog named Adam—when I get it. I just hope the dog is less gassy than my darling husband of twenty-eight years. Sherwood travels. Sherwood travels a lot and when he travels, he tends to eat unsavory, if not downright poisonous foodstuffs—in airports, on the run, without much thought or judgment, and at his age the results can be unsavory if not downright poisonous—sometimes volcanic. After a recent flight home, Sherwood began exhibiting the ominous rumblings and the strange expulsions of an airport dinner gone massively wrong. “Oh my goodness, what is going on with you?” I waved a hand wildly in front of my nose. “A Coney Island foot long hotdog.” He frowned and burped. “What were you thinking?” I said, horrified. “A man your age should know bet . . .” “With chili—the hotdog had chili. A foot long chili dog.” He rolled on the bed and groaned while various noises emanated from various parts of his person. “Whatever you ate isn’t dead yet. It’s still making sounds. How could you possibly survive two hours on an airplane in your condition?” “The real question is, how did the other passengers survive two hours on an airplane—with me.” I gasped for air and clawed at my chest. “You . . . did . . . not!” “Oh I did—a lot. I let it rip; I had to or die, but I pulled a blanket over myself and pretended to be asleep. No one knew that it was me.” Shocked by his crazed optimism, I said, “Oh they knew. Believe me, they knew. Babe, you live alone in a hotel room way too much if you think people on that airplane didn’t notice the green methane cloud hovering over your seat.” A volcano rumbled somewhere near the place where pizza goes to die in my husband’s insides. “I am pretty disgusting.” It seemed pointless to disagree with the obvious, so I smiled a crooked smile and tried not to breathe. He lay on the bed like something washed up on the beach after a bad oil spill. Putting his hands behind his head, he rumbled and gurgled—thinking deep and meaty thoughts. “You know what I am?” I couldn’t imagine. The truth is, I couldn’t get enough fresh air to form a coherent thought. “I’m a modern day mountain man.” The volcano erupted—once, twice. I was momentarily blinded. “You mean like one of those guys who used to live in the mountains, in caves, wrapped in animal skins, wandering around—alone—talking trash to a donkey, looking for beavers to bash on the head? That kind of mountain man?” The volcano complained but did not erupt. “Absolutely.” I sighed. “And just think, now that Adam is married it’s just you and me and whatever you decide to eat on your way home.” “That’s right.” He visibly brightened. “And that means we can run around the house naked if we want.” “Is that something a modern day mountain man would do, you think?” He burped and bubbled. “Absolutely.” “Hey, I want to be a mountain girl. Can I have a dog?” Don’t you worry about me; I’m back in college, I’ve got a great new desk to do my homework on, and I’m getting a dog. And if life gets dark and dreary, I have my darling husband of twenty-eight years who, by all accounts, is a modern day mountain man. Top that. Happy to be getting a dog, Linda (Hold the Chili) Zern |
| “But I want to be a kitty cat,” Emma (age five) said. I found this a little surprising. Usually Emma wants to be a sparkle unicorn. I looked at Zoe and Isabel (both six) to assess the degree that diplomatic negotiations had deteriorated in little girl world. “Well that sounds like a lot of fun. I like to pretend I’m a kitty cat all the time, and then I take a nap on a rug in the sun.” Zoe and Isabel ignored me. What I liked, wished, or wanted was pointless to the debate, that was obvious. “But we want to play ‘three sisters,’ not ‘two sisters and a kitty cat,’” Zoe said. Her chin was lifted. Her arms crossed. Negotiations had reached the crisis point. Isabel nodded and crossed her arms. I tried the bright side approach. “But doesn’t ‘two sisters and a kitty cat’ sound like some fun.” “No.” Zoe added a frown to her crossed arms. “Why?” “Because we always play ‘two sisters and a kitty cat.’ We want Emma to be a girl, not an animal.” Emma moaned or maybe meowed. “Because,” Zoe continued, “if Emma is a kitty cat then we have to chase her with nets and try to catch her.” I could see their point. I hate when I have to chase my friends with nets. It’s fun for a couple of spins around the old track and field but before you know it, you’re dizzy and thirsty. “But I want to be a kitty cat,” Emma said. She then began to groom herself with her tongue. We were at an impasse—‘two sisters and a kitty cat’ is not ‘three sisters and no kitty cat,’ no matter how you slice the cat treats. Someone was going to be sad, mad, or disappointed. I was fresh out of win-win solutions for girl-world, so I retreated to grown up got-no-clue-world. “Well, you girls work it out,” I said. And that’s when Zoe lobbed a surface to air missile at a small South Korean island. NO! I’m kidding. Actually, I don’t know what happened. No punches were thrown. No screaming was overheard. No missiles were launched. “Well, you girls work it out,” I had said. And they did. Somehow, someway, they did— without adult intervention. I wish I’d eavesdropped. When I was a kid living in Titusville, our moms would kick us out of the house in the morning, throw PBJ sandwiches at us at noon, make us drink water out of the hose, and not let us come inside until the mosquito fog trucks rolled down Rose Marie Drive. We, the neighborhood kids, played hopscotch and Chinese jump rope like they were Olympic sports, snitched drywall chalk from construction sites, and played stickball until someone got mad or hurt. If you went inside you had to take a nap. No one went inside. Parents were not consulted unless stitches were required. The big kids were the bosses and the little kids were allowed to live and play, if we did it quietly and didn’t whine. It wasn’t fair. It was life. It was good preparation for the world as it would be, not as we wished it could be. And we learned to work it out. Zoe stomped into her grandfather’s home office frustrated with her five-year old cousin. “Poppy, I just want Emma to be a regular girl and play with me.” “What does Emma want?” he asked. “To be a sparkle unicorn. Emma always wants to be a sparkle unicorn or a white seal.” “Well, what should we do about that?” Zoe batted her eyelashes. “Poppy? Will you be a girl and come and play with me?” “Sure. But why don’t we let Emma play too and be a sparkle unicorn?” “Okay.” And they worked it out. Linda (Regular Girl) Zern |
| I sent my husband to the airport with the following note: Dear TSA and Department of Homeland Security, Please excuse my husband from being felt up by strange men every single week because of his anomaly. His anomaly is just fat. His doctor says its just “one of those things,” and he’s had this pocket or lump of fat for thirty years. It is benign. It poses no threat to national security. It is entirely a coincidence that the fat deposit appears to be living in the pocket of his pants. Sincerely, His Wife PS I believe the fat deposit is the place where all the bacon my husband eats goes to die. “How did the note from your wife [that would be me] go over with the TSA?” I wanted to know. “It didn’t.” “Didn’t you get felt up again, anomaly boy?” “Nope, I just didn’t get into the naked-scanner-junk-touching line.” “But I thought . . .” “Nope. Not all the security lines have the Peeping Tom machines. I just got in the regular line: shoes, belt, laptop.” He looked at me. I looked at him. “Do you think the terrorists know about this regular line stuff?” “Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said, shrugging. “Tell me something. If you were a terrorist, would you put powdered bomb bits in your panties or in one of those Christmas salamis you can mail to Greenland via the cargo hold of a big old airplane full of cheerleaders on their way to Disney World?” I looked at him. He looked at me. “So you probably won’t need that note about your fat lump anymore?” “Nope. Besides I have a plan of my own to protest the Peeping Tom machines next time I get stuck in one of those lines.” “Do I want to know?” He looked at me. I looked at him—with squinty eyes. He got that “I’ve been a bad boy since I was twelve” look on his face. “I’ll show the TSA an anomaly they won’t soon forget.” “Will this display be animal, vegetable, or mineral?” He smiled. People criticize me for watching cable news every waking hour of every waking day, but what they don’t understand is that I HAVE to watch cable news non-stop. How else am I going to know when Sherwood’s carted off to TSA strip search land, deported to the gulag of misfit toys, and branded a dirty rotten salami smuggler? Hmmmmmm? Linda (Travel Advisory!) Zern |
| “You can’t wear seventeen monkeys to church.” Zoe, my six-year old granddaughter, had come to church literally draped in monkeys. She had two to twenty monkeys Velcro-ed around her neck. There were monkey bracelets wrapped around her wrists. She had thrown a monkey backpack over her shoulders and topped the entire monkey collection off with a monkey hat. Zoe glowed with pride in her accessorizing acumen. She looked like a zoo exhibit had exploded onto her body. The ensuing conversation between Zoe’s father and Zoe (better known as Cheetah Girl, Queen of the Jungle) over the appropriate number of monkeys a person should wear to church lasted the major part of our church service and included tears, frustration, and gnashing of teeth. And that was just the Dad. Arguments that do not work to de-monkey a monkey girl include: “Zoe, no one else is wearing thirty-three monkeys to church.” “Zoe, mommy isn’t wearing twenty-seven monkeys to church.” “Zoe, all those monkeys are going to scare the babies.” “Zoe, no one will be able to concentrate on the service, because they’ll be trying to count the monkeys on your body.” “Zoe, all the other children will want your monkeys and they’ll cry.” “Zoe, the monkeys are making your father break out in monkey pox.” “Zoe, you’re going to cause a riot.” “Zoe, take off the monkeys.” “Zoe, NO MONKEYS!” “Oh, let her wear the monkeys.” This from her Poppy, who would let the grandchildren go to church in their underwear, carrying flyswatters if they wanted to. There are people who climb great mountains. There are people who explore active volcanoes. There are people who show up at Wal-Mart at four in the morning, on black Friday, to be the first to buy the Griddle MAX by Cuisinart for one dollar. These people are known as thrill seekers—also nuts. All of these people combined cannot hope to experience the stamina and courage required to argue the taste level of monkey fashion with a six-year old. Parenting is the ultimate extreme sport, right up there with bungee jumping into a river using a chain of monkeys Velcro-ed to a bridge railing. For one long year, my youngest son, Adam, refused to leave the house until his sisters tied his hair up in a rubber band. His hair stuck out of his head like a hair horn, but since he was my fourth child and my second son, I knew better than to care. I was numb, which is another way of saying I had cried, “Uncle!” quietly. When Adam could finally talk, he told us his rubber-banded hair horn was his “feather.” Who knew Adam had been embracing his Native American heritage and had been reaching out to his ancestors all that time? Climb a great mountain if you must. Dance about the rim of a spewing volcano if you dare. But if you really want the thrill of unpredictability, the raw terror of potential destruction, or the rush that comes from a total loss of control, then go car shopping with a four-year old boy. A boy who, at any moment, might drop his pants so that he can take a whiz on the tire of a brand new Lincoln Town Car— in public—in the showroom—in front of the entire sales force of The Central Florida Lincoln-Mercury dealership. (We bought the Cougar station wagon. We did not get the special discount.) Or you can attempt to convince Zoe that wearing a mob of monkeys just “isn’t done” in polite society, which is like trying to convince cannibals that boiled meat is not fine dinner fare. Linda (No Fly Swatters) Zern |
| One Man’s Anomaly . . . is another man’s fatty deposit. “I had to get patted down again because of my anomaly.” It wasn’t a confession, exactly. It was more a baffled observation. My husband works in Detroit, Michigan (for now) and lives in the Orlando, Florida area. He spends a lot of time in airports, on airplanes, and getting himself through security lines run by the Transportation Security Administration. “What anomaly? What are you talking about?” “The anomaly in my pants.” A thousand comments, comebacks, and one-liners rumbled through my head. God bless him, but sometimes my husband makes it tricky to express myself in a dignified sensible way, because there are straight lines and then there are Sherwood’s straight lines. “Okay, let’s start with your pants. Were you wearing pants?” He sighed. “Don’t be goofy, of course I was wearing pants. But those full body scanners can see right through your pants—like superman.” “Yikes.” “Yep, and then the guy looking right through my pants radios the guy making me stand in the x-ray vision machine and says, ‘We’ve got an anomaly.’ That’s the word they use, an anomaly.” He paused and then shuddered before continuing. “And then they want to know what I have in my pocket. That’s how they say it, ‘What’s in your pocket?’” I could feel the thinking wrinkles on my forehead deepen. “In your pocket? But there’s nothing . . . oh, wait, I’m feel a theory formulating. Are you telling me that . . . no way!” “Yes. The anomaly in my pocket is actually the fat tumor on my leg, and a strange man has to feel it, after they see it, every time I go through security.” We were both quiet thinking about the ramifications of my husband having his fat tumor “outed” by the TSA. “Maybe you can get a doctor’s note explaining your anomaly?” I said. “Or I can write you up a little something?” So here it is; my husband’s anomaly note: Dear TSA and Department of Homeland Security, Please excuse my husband from being felt up by strange men every single week because of his anomaly. His anomaly is just fat. His doctor says its just “one of those things,” and he’s had this pocket or lump of fat for thirty years. It is benign. It poses no threat to national security. It is entirely a coincidence that the fat deposit appears to be living in the pocket of his pants. Sincerely, His Wife PS I believe the fat deposit is the place where all the bacon my husband eats goes to die. Sherwood and I believe it is important for Americans to know that our government is working hard keeping this country safe by having a federal employee feel up his fatty deposit every week. Rest easy. Sleep sound. Shop freely. Another reason we made the decision to share our “story” with the world is so Americans with anomalies might know that they are not alone—when the TSA agent comes at them with rubber gloves and a crappy attitude. Linda (That’s no anomaly; that’s my singularity!) Zern |
| “You have to come with me,” she said. The sound of crayons being digested slowly crackled in the background, and the smell of rubber nipples was almost tangible through the phone. “Yeah, okay sure.” I made a wild guess and assumed my oldest daughter, Heather, needed me to go somewhere with her to do something. “Where, when, and why?” “The Doctor’s. Monday. Because I took the kids with me to vote and people kept glaring at me and mumbling the word, ‘Babysitter,’ like a voodoo curse.” “How’d the kids do?” “Great, I threatened them with death and told them if they were loud they’d get thrown out. They wanted to know if we were going to the library.” “Okay then, a trip to the doctor’s office on Monday, you and the gang.” “And Mom, we’re all getting flu shots . . .” Click. By the time we barreled the double stroller past the elevators and into the doctor’s office, the only kid not suspicious was Zachary (aged three months.) Zachary was busy doing his baby lemur impression. Conner (aged four) was the first to formulate a theory. “I hate shots. I will try [cry.]” Zoe (aged six) smelled a rat with a hypodermic. Zoe had dressed herself in an orange ball cap, rainbow knee socks, purple striped skirt and matching shirt, fuzzy boots, and green messenger bag. It’s hard to get one over on Zoe. “Are we getting a shot today, Mom?” Heather wrestled Kip (aged two) out of his clothes for his physical and said, “Yep!” And the plotting began. Conner talked me into taking him to the potty, which he claimed was not a potty and that he needed another potty, presumably by the elevators or Atlanta. I stood in the hallway arguing with a four-year old. “Conner I’m pretty sure that is a potty; I recognize a toilet when I see one.” Conner’s doctor walked by and said, “That’s the restroom, lady. Careful, you may have a runner; I predict he’s going for a high speed escape.” “What’s escape mean?” Conner asked. “It means to run away.” “Let’s try that, YaYa.” Zoe suggested we turn the lights out and stay really quiet. Conner crawled into the diaper bag compartment of the stroller and started to eat pretzels and babble. Zoe climbed under a chair and attached herself to it like a limpet. Kip spun himself in circles until he fell over. The baby drifted off to sleep in the middle of flu shot hysteria. “See why you needed to come with us?” Yep. We talked Conner into being brave by telling him that Uncle Aric, who is a soldier, gets shots all the time. In fact, he’s had so many shots he’s going to be the only one in our family who survives the influenza zombie apocalypse. We did not tell Conner that bit. Heather tried to pry Zoe free of the chair, but she’d already started to secrete a hard coral shell. I went in for the capture, but Zoe kicked me with her fuzzy boots and sent me rolling across the floor like a brittle marble. It took two large bodied nurses, one YaYa, and her mom to get her flu free. She screamed her head off and acted like an idiot. Conner got to play computer games with Poppy for being brave. When Zoe wanted to know why she didn’t get to go too, her mother said, “Because you screamed your head off, acted like an idiot, and you kicked people with your fuzzy boots.” Zoe countered with, “I was screaming for my life.” Man oh man, there’s a lot of that going around. I hope it’s not catching. Linda (Flu Shot Approved) Zern |
| When I tell the college kids at school I’ve been married for thirty-two years, they always ask the same thing. “To the same man?” “Yep! And he’s Superman, and I can’t help it that he’s crazy about me.” Not only is he crazy about me, he’s a good man to have on the other end of the cell phone if you’re stuck in the Central Florida version of a Greek tragedy—an Interstate # 4 traffic jam—a seven mile long, bumper to bumper, I-4 traffic jam and car carnival of futility and abandoned well of hissing fossil fuels. The announcer with the sound of chopper blades beating in the background raised the warning voice over the radio, “Do not get on I-4! From John Young to the state of New Hampshire I-4 is a solid block of petrified traffic. Do not get on I-4! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT GET ON I-4.” “Noooooooooooo!” I was on the on-ramp to I-4 as the announcement faded into the sound of the emergency broadcast system. Too late, my bumper introduced itself to the bumper in front of me and my fifty-minute commute turned into a two and half hour Gitmo ordeal. I called my husband of thirty-two years in Detroit where he works for OnStar the GPS service of General Motors. How’s that for irony? “Babe, where am I?” “Who are you?” he asked. “Can’t talk now, a plumber in a plumbing truck is trying to get my attention with hand gestures and tonnage rights.” Click. I called him back. “Sherwood! Where am I now?” He hesitated, suspecting another one of my wifely pop quizzes. Over the years I’ve developed a system of stealth pop quizzes designed to measure my husband’s girl savvy. In thirty-two years, the only pop quizzes of mine Sherwood has ever passed have dealt with sex. “Linda, I never had that GPS tracker implanted in your skull. I have no idea where you are now.” “There’s a Holy Land on my left and a Target on my right. Some might make the argument that the Holy Land and Target represent the same thing.” “Still not sure.” “Gotta go. We’ve started to creep.” Click. Forty minutes later, I called him back. “If I get off at Amelia Street, how lost am I going to get?” “Very,” he said. Click. From the traffic jam, I ricocheted a final signal off a satellite in space to my husband in Michigan. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m getting off at Par Street, but I can’t remember how to get from Par to Fairbanks. Can you Google it for me?” He sighed and said, “Yep!” And just like a spy handler at the CIA he steered me through the morass of steaming vehicles, screaming drivers, and reckless plumbing trucks and got me from Par to Fairbanks, and I wasn’t even late for my Crime Fiction Writing Workshop, which Sherwood likes to think of as a kind of super expensive ceramics class. He’ll sing a different tune when I finally figure out where I am, and how to make money writing crime fiction ceramics. But that’s my husband for you; when I’m not sure where I am or how lost I’m about to get he’s there. He’s the guy with the Google. He’s the voice in my ear. He’s the calm for my storm. He’s the fire in my heart. He’s Superman, and he’s crazy about me. But then I’m crazy about him too; what can you do? Happy anniversary, Babe. Linda (Superman’s Girlfriend) Zern |
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