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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 |
| I’ve spent the last two hours goofing around on the Internet, and I noticed that **real authors have a page on their websites called FAQ. I believe this may stand for Formal Advanced Quizzes, Forces Against Quips, or Frequently Asked Question. Because I am an author and a writer, this disclaimer will be written in the form of a FAQ. Q: Are your weekly “essays” fiction, non-fiction, or creative non-fiction? A: Yes! RA (Real Answer): I would call my weekly postings creative non-fiction, which is the truth dressed up to go to a party in a paper dress. Q: Isn’t your family tired of having their every wart and ear hair examined in public and chortled over by tens of dozens of your fans via your writing? A: Yes! RA: Not at all, as long as I pay them a dollar every time I mention their names. Q: How long have you been scribbling your thoughts down in written form? RA: For as long as I’ve had thoughts—eleven years. Q: Tell us a little about yourself and who would play you in the movie? RA: I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL YAYA to Zoe, Conner, Emma, Sadie, Kipling, Zachary, and Reagan. Debbie Reynolds should play me in the movie if she had been born after me, instead of before me. Q: What’s the worst thing about being a writer? A: Yes! RA: Sitting on my butt for hours and hours and hours. Writing is fun for my brain. ***Zumba is fun for my butt. Q: What’s been the strangest feedback on your work? A: My sister-in-law holding my first manuscript in her hands said, “That’s a lot of words.” She refused to read it. And a young man recently questioned my use of a llama in my crime fiction story. RA: I don’t have a llama in my crime fiction story. Q: Can we be done? A: Yes! Sincerely, Linda (Llama Lover) Zern **Real authors are just writers whose words come conveniently wrapped inside the covers of a book, otherwise they’re still just writers. ***Zumba is a Latin based exercise requiring the excessive and repeated use of one’s butt and hips. I’m the best one in my class. No really, I am. |
| “Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.” Yiddish Proverb Several years ago, the state of Florida experienced a series of hurricanes. Government officials were quick to offer helpful survival suggestion to weather the storms: stock up, board up, hunker down, and pray. I remember worrying for my Yankee neighbors who might not understand the Southern concept of “hunkering” or “to hunker down.” If you’ve never been on a midnight raccoon hunt and come up on a hollow tree that is surrounded by baying ‘coon hounds, and seen the way a ‘coon can disappear into a hole in the trunk of that tree like magician’s smoke, you might think hunkering means to stoop a little bit and button up your raincoat. It doesn’t. It means to crawl into a hole. It means to crawl into a hole that a pack of dogs can’t drag you out of. Raccoons know how to hunker, so do opossums. “There’s a ‘possum in the garage.” Our daughter, Heather, has a six week old infant, Zachary. She is sleep deprived. She is hormonal. She is often ignored. “Heather, it’s broad daylight; you’re delirious. The baby’s probably hungry?” “I’m telling you. There’s a ‘possum in the garage. I watched it walk in, and I haven’t seen it walk out. Unless it’s a magic ‘possum it’s in here.” Zac bobbed his six-week old head on her shoulder, staring at the world with unblinking blue eyes. He resembles a baby ‘possum in a lot of ways. “Honey . . .” “THERE’S A ‘POSSUM IN HERE; I’M TELLING YOU!” Because she’s sleep deprived and hormonal, she can get fired up about our condescending lack of respect—also ‘possum sighting. Her Dad began, half-heartedly, to poke under shelving and the grandkid’s riding toys with a broom handle. “Honey, there’s no ‘possums in the garage.” “IT’S HERE!” Zac bobbed and stared. When his big sister pushes his ears forward he looks like one of the seven dwarves—Dopey. “There’s no way a ‘possum can fit inside this . . . toy.” My husband flipped over the Cub Cadet electric child sized riding lawn mower. A ‘possum stared at us from inside the guts of the riding toy. It was big time hunkered down. Everyone screamed. The grandchildren scrambled. We threw them into the bed of the pickup truck to avoid angry ‘possum running up their legs syndrome. We grew quiet. “Ha! I told you so,” Heather said. “Wow, that’s a big mouse,” four-year old Conner said. “Blow it up.” “Don’t hurt the ‘possum,” six-year old Zoe said. The ‘possum bared its teeth, showing off, because ‘possums have the most teeth of any mammal on earth. We screamed. Everyone had a suggestion on how best to dislodge a hunkered down ‘possum: shake it out, pry it out, poke it out, blow it up, or let it live inside the riding toy forever. We scratched our heads. I, the YaYa, crafted a theory. The ‘possum had been drawn to the garage for free handouts. The free handouts consisted of cat food in an oven roaster pan. Cats eat cat food. ‘Possums eat cat food. Cats hate water. Therefore the ‘possum was like a cat and hates water. I turned the garden hose on full blast and hosed that toothy sucker out of there in about 7.6 seconds. It rambled off to hunker down under the garden bridge to become a ‘possum troll. For the rest of the day, Conner wouldn’t sit down without asking, “YaYa, is there a ‘possum under this chair? YaYa, is there a ‘possum under this potty? YaYa, is there a ‘possum under the sandbox?” Country living has taught me a lot about life, death, and the art of hunkering when times get tough and someone is poking at you with a broom handle. Dig in for as long as you can, until it’s time to ramble off to live under a bridge like a troll. I hunker. I hunkered. I have hunkered. Linda (Chief ‘Possum Wrangler) Zern |
| Barnacle Babe I’ve learned two important facts in my creative fiction writing class. I’m an idiot, and all my favorite authors are dead. When did that happen? About the dead author part, it’s possible I’ve always been an idiot. It’s a strange paradox of life that by the time you have something interesting to say, you’re half way to dead and other weird stuff starts happening to you. For example: (Unexplained Hair Loss) – Parts of my face have started to disappear. My eyebrows are missing. I have to draw my eyebrows on my head with a stencil and a crayon. If I don’t draw eyebrows on my head I look like Queen Elizabeth (not this Queen Elizabeth but that other Queen Elizabeth with no eyebrows.) (Excess Face) – Not only are my eyebrows missing but when I bend over to pick up my eyebrow crayon, my face slides off my skull bones. It’s creepy. I’ve never had so much excess face. I used to be able to hang upside down on the monkey bars for a long time and my chins never fell over my eyes, blinding me. (Unexplained Hair Growth) – I don’t want to talk about, but just remember that we all get hairy in the end. (Memory Loss) – I can’t remember the color of my hair. I know it’s not the color of the girl’s hair on the box. But what color is it? What kind of person can’t remember the color of their own hair? (Barnacle Growth) – I get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, “What the heck is that growing on my head/neck/chest/eyelid/entire body? It wasn’t there yesterday, and where are my eyebrows?” (Smart Aleck Doctor’s Comments) – “Oh don’t worry about that bump, lump, mound, or pimple. It’s a barnacle. You’ve been in the water too long.” (Clock Confusion) – I’ve started to go to bed before the chickens but not to sleep. It’s so people can’t find me, and I can write down all the interesting things I have to say, after having lived long enough to actually have something interesting to say. According to my creative writing teacher, “If you aren’t writing to make money you’re an idiot.” That makes me an idiot with barnacles and no eyebrows. Could be time to dry dock. Linda (High Tide) Zern |
| I moved through the martial arts forms like a small but wiry tiger, my punches clean, my kicks elegant. I prided myself on being able to kick as high as the average bully’s pumpkin head. Think Yoda with arthritis. Having abandoned dignity some years back, I never held back on the martial arts yelling part. I was always the loudest. My goal was to perfect the shouting bit so that I could kill people by yelling at them. Sometimes I yelled so loud I scared the little kids. Secretly I was pleased when this happened. Once in a while, I would lose focus and start to think that I was smooth, hot stuff in my white outfit (size – large child) and the great cosmic force in the universe (whom I like to call God) would orchestrate my downfall—also known as my humiliation. I moved through the martial arts exercise like a small but wiry tiger, my punches clean, my kicks elegant. Finishing, I slapped the sides of my legs, bowed low from the waist, and allowed myself a small but triumphant smile, feeling like a miniature Ninja warrior. The woman behind me tapped my shoulder. I whirled, my tiny fists of fury moving to block any aggression or insult. I thought about kicking her in the head. I yelled—loudly. She raised one eyebrow. “Excuse me, but I think you should know that there is a dryer sheet stuck to the back of your uniform. It looks generic." “Of course there is,” I said. And of course it was a generic brand; everyone knows the generic dryer sheets and the brand name dryer sheets are made in the same darn factory. I’m nobody’s fool. Reaching back over my shoulder I felt for the offending laundry aid, and because I was fairly warmed up from punching and kicking imaginary pumpkin headed bullies, I was able to contort myself sufficiently, first one way and then the other, to peel the dryer sheet from the middle of my back. The woman watched, offering no help, hints, or assistance. I considered kicking her in the head. Instead I balled the dryer sheet up in one hand, demonstrated a perfect roundhouse kick, and promptly wet my pants. And that’s why I never worry about getting too pleased with myself or snooty. The universe has its eye on me and makes sure to dope slap me right back into my proper place and mind set. As soon as I even start thinking I’m cool I wind up having to wipe my butt with a plane ticket (don’t ask.) I’m taking no chances on having the universe expose the truly embarrassing craziness about me, or as I like to say to my husband, “Think about it; I haven’t even begun to write about the really funny stuff.” Linda (Punch Drunk) Zern |
| YOU ARE NOT PRESENTLY CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET – (So quit tapping pointlessly at your keyboard, ‘ya big dummy!) The Internet repairman waved a six-inch length of cable at me. Four murderous gouges nearly severed its smooth cylindrical surface, leaving exposed wires to dissolve in the hostile atmosphere--also rain. “Wow! Someone really went at this, probably with a shovel or maybe an ax.” He examined the gouges more closely. “Maybe a butcher knife.” Slowly, I raised my hand and hung my head. “I did it. I confess. I killed the cable,” I said, feeling sheepish, chagrined, and goofy all rolled into one. “I thought it was just a really stubborn root when I was planting caladiums. Really, really stubborn! A bad stubborn . . . root.” “You might want to hang on to this.” He handed me the butchered hunk of Internet cable. “Please, don’t tell my family. This isn’t the first time I killed the cable. The first time, I wasn’t anywhere near it when I ran over it with the lawnmower.” He began to inch his way to his repair truck, never taking his eyes off of me. “Sure, lady, sure! Sounds reasonable!” And then under his breath, “When Dish Network freezes over.” He ran the last few steps to his truck. I felt bad for frightening the computer repairman that way. When I was a girl, technical electronic difficulties were handled with tin foil and rabbit ears. There were three television channels and a lot of fuzzy static. The static came in black and white. Computers came in warehouses. Now technical electronic difficulties are handled with modem connection adjustments, phone calls bounced off of satellites to help centers in places I can’t spell, and appointments with repairmen apparently carrying submarine sonar equipment. A week after our Internet connection to the worldwide universe went dark, a repairman showed up at our house with his sonar-cable-finding-wand. He checked connections. He climbed poles. He dug up cable. He waved his sonar-cable-finding-wand about. The whole process reminded me of a water diviner trying to locate water with a forked stick. When he asked me if there had been any “digging” in the general area of the buried cable, I felt my stomach flip and then flop. Sure there had been digging. I am a digger. I am a habitual digger. I own five shovels, which I leave stuck in random spots all over our property, and then forget where I stuck them. That’s why there are five shovels. And no Internet service—temporarily. There are days I long for tin foil and completing a conversation with my husband without having him go into an unblinking, unrelated conversation with the tooth in his ear. I think the tooth is blue. Linda (Dirt Digger) Zern |
| Reagan, our new grand daughter, doesn’t look real. She looks like my daughter and her husband went and bought her at Toys R Us. She is our seventh grandchild. When our first grand daughter was born my friends asked if being a grandmother had “hit me” yet. It “hit me” the day the first grandbaby came home from the hospital and my husband and I were in bed that night. I turned to him and said in reverent tones, “Hey, we’re not going to have to get up tonight—not once. Wow, it’s good to be us.” We embraced, rolled over, and went fast to sleep—until we had to get up to tinkle. Or as a friend of mine put it, when you get the phone call from the new mom and she says that grandma should come quick and get this crazy kid or (fill in the blank) and then you, grandmother supreme, swoop in and with your wisdom, experience, and superior night’s sleep save the day. It’s grand to be us. It’s tough being the grandparent too, because you have to wave goodbye as your perfect, fresh, doll-like, grand child is driven home by its parents, two people that you love beyond adjectives, recognizing that the only living thing the two of them have ever been responsible for was a Bonsai tree. They killed it. They had a palm tree, but it got infested with some kind of leaf hopping spider. They never owned a dog. So you worry a bit and you catch yourself yelling bits of advice as they drive away. “Don’t over water the baby and check her for spiders.” To be fair, I’ve had moments of “over watering the baby.” Like the time my oldest son, Aric, retreated to his bedroom, locked his door, and failed to emerge for an entire two week period during the troubled teen years. I finally identified myself, slid my badge under the door, and then kicked the door in. Having to get the door jam fixed was annoying and not my finest moment, but I didn’t know you could jimmy the door off its hinges with a butter knife back then. SSG Aric Zern later called me to apologize for being a teenage butt-head; he was teaching new soldiers how to throw hand grenades—into a volcano at the time, some of the recruits may have been butt-heads. Or the time I wore Adam’s baseball cup around my neck like the Hope diamond. When Adam forgot his baseball cup for the sixty-second time and I had to make the thirty-minute trip back home—again, I took drastic over watering the Bonsai plant steps. I wrestled the cup from behind the dresser, strung the cup on a shoestring, wrote THIS IS ADAM’S CUP on the front with permanent marker, and wore it to the ball field. A few thought me harsh. Perhaps. Then again Adam never forgot his baseball cup again and is planning to be a lawyer, probably to sue me. Of course, who can forget the time I spanked Maren for dancing naked with a tube of Chapstick tucked between her butt cheeks. She was four and we had discussed naked Chapstick dancing and how much it upset her siblings—her parents, and society in general. I’m not sure if it’s a spanking offense, but it seemed right at the time. Maren and her husband just brought baby Reagan, the living doll, home from the hospital. I hope Maren hides the Chapstick. Then there was the time that Heather (who had been waiting breathlessly for her breasts to grow for about six years) came careening down the stairs yelling, “Mom, Mom, they’ve come. My boobs are here.” And I . . . laughed. LAUGHED! Outloud! I said, “No honey, you’re just cold.” Is it any wonder she over watered her Bonsai tree? Heather and Phillip have one lovely daughter and three wild and wooly boys and don’t have time to kill Bonsai trees anymore. So much time, so many mistakes to make, but one of the nicest things about being a mother who has achieved grand status is knowing that it will all work out. Kids are resilient. Parents figure it out, and our Father in Heaven allows for a pretty generous learning curve for most of this stuff we call life. Linda (Seven Up) Zern |
| In honor of our upcoming wedding anniversary I would like to hie back to a simpler time; a time when my husband and I realized we were outnumbered by the children, and we were forced to institute the following rule: The first one in the marriage to break and run had to take the kids with them—all the crazy, gum chomping, kids. Good times. When Sherwood and I were young we produced a lot of little kids, a lot of grubby, grimy little kids, who because of their love affair with dirt and grime required a ton of hosing off—also bathing. When these little kids took baths they sometimes chewed huge wads of bubble gum. I didn’t mind; it kept them quiet. (For a while they tried to bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with them into the tub, but I put the hoodoo on that right away.) In the early days and even though we had a lot of filthy children, we had only one bathroom. It had one bathtub. One fine evening, Sherwood decided to take a bath in our one and only bathtub, the very same tub our children had used earlier that evening. From the bathroom I heard the haunting boom of my husband’s voice. “Linda, get in here.” His voice was thick with some emotion I found hard to identify. It was repugnance. Naked and dripping, he stood leaning against the sink, his arms braced against the porcelain, bent slightly forward at the waist. He was not smiling or winking. “Look at this.” He pointed to his hairy damp backside bits. He added, “Is that what I think it is?” Me, I’m a funny girl, I asked, “Is this a test?” I did not look. “No, I mean it. Look at my butt.” “I’m not looking at your butt. You can’t make me.” He pointed harder at his backside, completely devoid of any spirit of good-natured high jinx. There was more back and forth, denial and insistence and such, but I’ll spare you. I finally realized that this might be a serious situation causing real distress for my husband because he’d been standing there leaning against the sink, naked and pointing at himself for, well, longer than was good for either one of us. I bent down and I did look. Sure enough, there it was, a wad of Double Bubble chewing gum the size of a hamster’s head nestled in . . . ummm. . . well, just nestled. I said, “Oops.” He said, “Get it off.” I asked, “How?” It was a good question. I believe I missed the chapter in Home Economics dealing with “butt hair gum removal.” I’d heard a rumor once—something club soda—stains or something, but I didn’t think club soda was going to apply in this case. I knew you could use ice to freeze gum and then chip it off of stuff, but chipping seemed the wrong sort of action to take. Pulling was right out. Shaving/cutting seemed promising, but it was going to be close work. I can remember hoping that my hand was going to be steady enough, what with the laughing and all. The real problem is that there just isn’t any kind of hotline for this. I blame the government. Let me just report that the operation was a success, and I employed a combination of techniques. To the children and now grandchildren I would like to say, “Let this be a lesson to you. Never chew gum in the bathtub. Chewing gum in the bathtub can make your father have to have his posterior shaved. There are reasons for family rules. Rules are our friends, and YaYa doesn’t make this stuff up. She has experience. She’s lived.” Linda (Steady Now) Zern ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| “Stop licking that baby!” You say it. Then you hear it. And then you wonder how your life has distilled down to this single moment of making bizarre even insane rules that at first blush reflect badly on your religion, culture, heritage, and even mental health. “No! I mean it! If you don’t stop licking that baby—I’ll lick you!” And you mean it, because the baby’s siblings are crazy, and if you don’t stop them they’ll lick that baby until it screams, and then you’re really in the soup. As a young mother I once made a list of ten family commandments. Commandment number one read: Thou shalt not eat PB&J sandwiches with plastic vampire teeth in your mouth. Adorable, right? Not so adorable when the kids, having tried to eat the—above mentioned—sandwiches, cried because their plastic vampire teeth became so gicky with peanut butter slime as to be rendered disgusting. I pulled the plug on the vampire teeth denture experiment after catching myself brushing peanut butter drool out of plastic tooth crevices with my own personal toothbrush one too many times, or maybe it was one time. When making family laws, rules, or commandments it is (in my professional opinion) important to be clear and specific. Thou shalt not make mommy want to run away is way too vague—also suggestive and possibly fraught with legal ramifications. The children may in fact, want to make mommy run away and are just calculating the amount of baby licking required to achieve their nefarious goal of trying to make mom look like the one who did the crazy running away stuff. I always check the wall of photos at Walmart to be sure my family hasn’t posted my picture up there—just to make me nuts. An example of a much more efficaciously worded rule would be, anyone still defecating in his or her pants shall not, will not, or better not be allowed to carry a hammer or torque wrench around. I’ve actually heard myself yell, “Someone find that little, short kid in the diaper; he’s got a hammer—possibly a torque wrench.” I have found that as children mature the rules don’t have to be quite so specific and a parent can expect to fall back to the default setting of that great old standby, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Simple, clear, concise, and begs the question, “Do I really want other people licking my baby, lollipop, or dog bowl?” I recently sat through a lecture at my new college covering the honor code rules, as honor is understood and defined in the 21st century. I was shocked. It reminded me of PB&J and vampire teeth and really small children, prone to licking things—not food. It read (in part) Violations of the Academic Honor Code: PLAGIARISM, CHEATING, UNAUTHORIZED COLLABORATION, SUBMISSION OF WORK PREPARED FOR ANOTHER COURSE, FABRICATION, FACILITATING ACADEMIC DIS-HONESTY, VIOLATION OF TESTING CONDITIONS, LYING, FAILURE TO REPORT AN HONOR CODE VIOLATION. I wanted to ask the difference between fabrication and lying, but I was too intimidated, and I had plastic vampire teeth in my mouth at the time. Didn’t we have an honor code, once upon a time? Wasn’t it fairly simple and easily reprinted? Weren’t there like ten basic rules of civilized behavior? I seem to remember hearing something about it—once upon a time in a land far, far away. Linda (R is for Rules) Zern |
| At first we blamed the smell on our neighbor; it was a chicken pucky, burning bird feathers, vulture spit combo kind of smell. It was bad. Mr. Medina’s funny farm and goat emporium next door is always high on the list of usual odor producing suspects. Then we blamed the giant, pulsating, black muck wetlands (also known as a bog) out in the back of our property but then it quit raining and that dried up. Another possibility for the noxious fumes presented itself in the form of our other neighbor’s temporary, quite possibly illegal attempt at creating a personal landfill. We live in the county and not in the city limits; the rules are different out here—a lot of people collect giant piles of rubble for no apparent reason. However, when standing on our own back porch the smell of rotten eggs seemed so concentrated, so pungent we were forced to form yet another working theory for the nasty smell. “It’s the propane tank. It’s leaking.” Sherwood, the man and husband, sounded so sure, so crime scene investigator confident, I had to agree. “I’ll put it out in the yard so it doesn’t kill us.” The propane tank came to rest in the flower garden next to the caladiums. We were saved, except that we weren’t. Something still stank. Sooner or later truth rears its ugly head or in this case its stinking tail, and the facts are as follows; our home is surrounded by opossum holes (holes full of opossums): one under the bridge, one under the hedge, one under the back porch, and one under the bush next to the backdoor. We are surrounded. Opossums live in these holes. Opossums are nocturnal. Opossums, when not hanging from their tails from tree limbs in a charming “mother nature sure is cute” fashion, opossums wander about at night getting themselves murdered. Then they stagger back to their holes, crawl in, die, and then stink in a leaking propane, goat burning, bog festering, landfill rotting kind of way. The good news is opossums live in holes, eliminating the need to dig holes when they die, unless they decide to die under the chicken coop, and then all bets are off. The week of the opossum kill, a good friend of mine wrote on a social networking site about her wildly romantic encounter in a NYC subway station (similar to opossum holes but larger) and how the man who bumped into her was gorgeous, with an English accent, wore cuff links, and had a business card—no foul odors were mentioned. In the meantime, I was throwing dirt on a maggot ridden rotting opossum carcass. Shaking my boney fist at the Heavens, I snarled, “Great, I’ve been reduced to burying road kill! And still working for free, come to think of it, everything I’ve ever done my whole life, I’ve done for free. I’m like freak’en Ghandi.” I added this last bit under my breath, to no one who cared, under an indifferent sky—alone. The bad news is there are three more opossums out there waiting to become road kill and not one of them wears cuff links. Linda (Shovel Ready) Zern |
When I was a girl—love but mostly S-E-X—remained hidden beneath an ellipsis of ink. The hero swooped to take the girl in his arms, she forgot to remember to struggle, long enough to stay, and then . . . dot, dot, dot . . . It was delicious, tantalizing punctuation—marking dog-eared pages, full of anticipation and imagination. And now—not so much. In today’s world romance isn’t for the faint of heart or subtle of gesture; the girls have no clothes on, and the boys don’t wear gloves, which is too bad because once upon a time (according to Jane Austen) when a man touched your naked hand with his naked hand you were engaged. I know it’s true. I watch a lot of Masterpiece Theater. I’m happy to report that at our cave . . . oops, sorry . . . I mean house, at our house, romance is still something of a mystery, surrounded by subtleties, covered with the gentle breeze of confusion, wrapped up in code words. Smiling, I walked into my husband’s office recently, only to be greeted with the following invitation (quite possibly threat, the jury is still out.) Without looking at me, he said, “Careful or I’ll take you over there on that tofu and . . .” Confused and a little alarmed I scanned our office and saw stuffed bookshelves, filing cabinets, computer junk, and pillows lining a . . . “Are you trying to say futon? You’ll take me over there on the futon and . . . Because, I can’t begin to describe to you how disturbed I am by the idea of you doing unspeakable things to my person on tofu. Maybe you’re having word seizures or . . .” “I’m not having Caesars or . . .” “Not Caesars, I said . . .” At this point in the exchange, he removed one glove and stretched out a naked hand towards my person and in the general direction of the futon. I ran and then . . . Sometimes in dreams I imagine long fingers of mist rolling across the moors behind the swamp in our backyard—out past the horse trailer with the busted tail light—while the moon drifts across a jaundiced sky, and my heart thumps loudly in the silent chambers of my heart, as I hide under the long folding couch resembling a bent bed; into the cloying depths of my dreaming night I can often hear Lord Sherwood hissing, “Let’s get it on.” Hey, there’s a reason I wear my hair exceedingly short—the better not to be dragged off to some misnamed lair resembling a cave, but that’s romance for you in this modern day and time. One minute you’re a lady wearing gloves and the next minute he’s got you on tofu and . . . dot, dot, dot . . . Linda (Lady Lovelorn) Zern |
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