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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 |
| For fifty-one years I’ve been a girl person, during a dizzying period of technological advances that have allowed mankind (oops, I mean human beings without apparent gender) to fly to the moon, dive the Mariana trench, and humiliate me in every conceivable way. Cathy Rigby, the first US gymnast to win a medal in the Olympics, introduced me, and a whole host of teenage girls to the wonders of modern feminine hygiene products. Kathy made Stayfree Maxi pads cool, and she made you think the you could be upside down on a four inch balance beam and not have a girl care in the world. I must have gotten stuck trying out the maxi-pad prototypes, because I never could do a handstand on a balance beam—ever, but that’s Madison Avenue for you. You can find out more about Cathy Rigby, the Maxi pad-wearing gymnast, at the Museum of Menstruation. Later, after my first mammogram, a technological marvel that can look inside your boobs—if your boobs are really, really flat, I was told that I would need a needle nosed biopsy and that the incision would be no larger than a grain of rice. I should have asked, “Brown or instant?” With the image of a grain of rice emblazoned on my mind, I walked into the biopsy room, wearing a paper towel, noticed that there was a great big hole in the surgical table, and had a hideous vision of my future. Horrified, I turned to the strange man about to dig around in my mammary gland and asked, “Is that hole for, what I think it’s for?” “Yep.” And it was. Once I flopped my slightly used, less than perky bosom into the mammary gland hole in the middle of the table the words “Boob Loogie” came to mind. When the highly touted anesthesia refused to deaden my dangling breast, and I complained loudly, the strange man digging around in my boob with a needle, said, “Well, some breasts are more dense than others.” “Dude, the end of my boob just hit your shoelace, how dense can it be?” Don’t even get me started on four C-sections in six years. For my first baby they shaved me “nipples to knees.” No, seriously that was the official medical expression. By the fourth baby, I was watching the entire surgery in a giant mirror, angled for my viewing pleasure. Recently, my daughters were describing the latest in gynecological advancements in the way of the latest in examination chairs. Apparently, there is a new “exam” chair that mimics the space shuttle in the act of taking off. A girl patient climbs in and with a flick of a switch, stirrups are deployed, the part under your bum disappears, and the chair reclines—until your head is poking down and your girl parts are poking up. When my oldest daughter demonstrated I felt faint and had to put my head between my knees. “I cannot do it,” I murmured from between my knees, “I simply cannot risk—The Chair. I will be making my next appointment with a certified noble savage of a witch doctor. As Scarlett O’hara is my witness, I swear it.” I love being a girl. I love the shoes, the clothes, the makeup, and the mystique of it all, but honestly, is it just me or is the modern world out of its technological mind? Linda (Girls Just Want to Have Fun) Zern |
| The first time I contracted cabin fever I came very close to committing homicide—pre-meditated but justifiable, of course. My husband of thirty something years came within a whisker of having his skull bashed in with a baseball bat, by my hand. When I say whisker, I mean whisker. It was a very near thing. My husband got me to move to a state with North in the title by telling me, that while it got brisk in the wintertime, it never snowed, or by last report there had not been snow of any significance since the Civil War. I bought it. We moved. Our first winter in North Carolina there was a freak snowstorm that dumped two feet of snow across a sheet of glacier ice, which floated over a river of liquid sleet, piled on top of hell—which had, in fact, frozen over. North Carolina was, to put it nicely, not ready. Our little band of strangers in a strange land was snowed in for two weeks. I was not ready. I contracted cabin fever on day two of our entrapment. Cabin fever is a malady that causes the sufferer to experience irrational irritations over seemingly minor annoyances magnified by a factor of about twelve cabillion, multiplied by 666. You get stinky mean. Until being “snowed in” or as I like to describe it “buried alive,” I had not really noticed that my darling husband had said exactly the same thing upon waking, every single day, for the entire course of our thirty years of marriage—THE EXACT SAME THING, EVERY SINGLE DAY, FOR THIRTY SOMETHING YEARS, . . . EVERY . . . SINGLE . . . DAY!!!!!!!! Every morning he sits straight up in bed and says, “Well, I guess I’ll go and get cleaned up now.” And it’s not that he says the EXACT SAME THING. It’s what he says. He guesses he’s going to get cleaned up! What would the alternatives be exactly? To get up but not get “cleaned up” and walk around with a Wooly Mammoth on his face all day, or to not get up at all, remain in bed in his own filth, and eventually have his skin grow into the mattress (and yes Phillip, that can happen, I saw it on TV!) By day five or six of being snowed in and with a cabin fever of about 212 degrees, I had not only picked up on this unfortunate verbal pattern, but I had started waiting for the inevitable, predictable, rhythmic cadence of his morning declaration like a cobra tracking the movements of a wounded mongoose. On day seven, I rolled towards him and with eyes narrowed to slits, and a reptilian hiss, said, “Sherwood, Do you know that you say the exact same thing, every single day, and that if you say it tomorrow I can’t be held accountable. There is a baseball bat under this bed, for crushing the brains of robbers, and I will use it—on you. I swear it.” He backed carefully away from his side of the bed, his eyes focused like laser beams on my face. “I mean it. I’ll do it.” I had quit brushing stuff (hair, teeth) three days previously. I was close to terminal. The day passed as snow drifted, settled, melted, and re-froze. I floated in our garden tub like a giant lily pad in water hot enough to blanche carrots. Then another endless night came and with it the sound of tree trunks exploding as the water inside them froze, expanded, and shattered sending splinters of wood catapulting away into the night and house siding. Trees toppled. Expensive landscaping expired, and then the morning came. Wrapped in knee socks, flannel pajamas, a bathrobe, and an overcoat, I lovingly stroked the baseball bat that I clutched to my chest. Tension pulsated through my hands and fingers and hair, as I lay in wait, er . . . waiting for Sherwood to wake up. Sitting straight up in bed, he said, “I guess I’ll go and . . .” my hands tightened around the bat when he paused a fraction of a second and grew very still, before adding, “get a shower.” Adrenalin oozed from between my fingers. I relaxed. He showered. The thaw came. Here in Florida, we’ve had a few of those murky winter days that make going out an ugly business, so we stay inside. I haven’t had cabin fever as much as cabin canker sores. As I write this, Sherwood is in bed calling me on his cell phone. He is literally ten feet away from my desk sending a signal into outer space, so that it can bounce off a satellite and ricochet back to earth, all so that he can ask me to do something risqué when I should be writing. Sometimes he calls me on his cell phone from the bathroom to ask me for toilet paper. Spring cannot come soon enough. Linda (Spring Fling) Zern |
Dateline: New Smyrna Beach; A Summer Gone By; A Mexican Restaurant: Adam, the youngest boy chick in my nest, ate one full cup of raw, jalapeno peppers in one sitting, on a fine Saturday, while the folksinger at the restaurant sang “Copacabana.” We watched. It was a bet. You know the kind of bet I mean. The one that goes like this, “I’ll bet you one hundred dollars you won’t eat that massive pile of jalapeno peppers that you’ve just picked off your nacho’s, because you despise them, and they will probably make you throw up.” You know! A boy bet. Adam won the bet. The other boy involved? His father, of course. Items that do NOT work to alleviate jalapeno pepper tongue burn include: water, soda (diet or regular), licking the restaurant’s checkered table cloth, sugar, salt, tongue scraping with (fork, knife, spoon, nacho chip, napkins—cloth or paper—bread,) air drying, or sucking the waitress’ apron. Boys are so weird; I said it when I was nine, and I stand by it. Watching Adam chew, snot, and cry his way through the entire heap of toxic peppers was revolting boarding on disgusting with a dash of horrific, but worse was the four hours of male speculation on what a full cup of jalapeno peppers was going to do to Adam’s gastrointestinal track and when. Boys are so weird. My son-in-law was happy to add to the discussion by relating a charming collegiate “Taco Bell – Hot Sauce Packet” story. The bet was for the consumption of one hundred packets, but the guy “melted down” (i.e. vomited) at fifty hot sauce packets. Disgusting but highly amusing was his official commentary. It’s a wonder to me that any members of their sex survive to reproduce. My boys thundered out of my uterus counting the days until they could hurl sharp sticks, tie up the cat, kidnap the Barbie dolls, skewer themselves with homemade arrows, and ride the pony naked (true story—don’t ask.) I knew that I was dealing with a new brand of barbarian when I heard myself saying, “There is no playing of computer games in this house, NAKED, mister—or pony riding!) I tried to think of all the ways they could break the rules while naked. I couldn’t. Please don’t misunderstand. I love boys. They are fun. They are game. They are always ready to go hiking through the mud of the The Little Big Econ State Park knocking down the giant Banana spider’s webs that block the trail with big sticks. Boys are exciting and unpredictable, and you absolutely never know when they’re going to show up at your baby shower in a yellow convertible Volkswagen Beetle without their pants on—for a lark. It happened to a good friend of mine, and it wasn’t a problem until my friend trotted all her girlfriend’s attending the party out to meet her husband, the proud pop to be. True story. She had a boy. I love boys, but sometimes I don’t feel sorry for them. As we left the restaurant, my husband (a boy) whispered, “Where am I going to get a hundred bucks to pay Adam?” “Not my girl purse,” I said, while batting my long eyelashes. Gentlemen, I salute you and all those like you. You make life interesting, but honestly, put your pants on! Linda (Barbarian Mother and Overlord) Zern |
It was one of those noises that I, oops, (that should read—she) SHE could not ignore. One of those noises that comes in the middle of the night and that can smack a person awake with the reliability of a mortar round—a pounding, thumping, ominous noise—indicating either roof collapse or raccoon attack. I, oh crap, (I mean Linda) LINDA came awake with the vigor of an android becoming self-aware, eyes snapping open like a Chatty Kathy doll. The glowing dial of the clock read two a.m. To the thump-thump of a midnight heart attack, Linda scrambled into her fluffy yellow bathrobe, pulling the mismatched purple polka dot belt tight. She worried about the effects of the frigid—even deadly—December weather and pulled on a nappy overcoat over the top of the whole bedtime fashion mess. It was the blue coat she wore to muck out the barn. There was hay in the pockets and sticking out of the collar. Hay scratched her neck and jabbed her in the jowls. Images of a scarecrow may have come to mind. Hmmmm, let me think! Yes, yes, they did. Pushing open the door with its interior door handle— that should have been an exterior door handle except Home Depot had been out of exterior door handles so MY, no HER husband had settled for an inside door knob on the outside—Linda remembered to be annoyed. Pacing the back porch and peering into the darkness of the icy backyard she found no source for the strange night noise—all was quiet, icy death. Satisfied and shivering, she tried to pull open the interior-on-the-outside-doorknob and found it locked tight—tightly—locked, as in you ain’t getting back in here without a crowbar—locked. Her dogs stared at her through the glass of the door. She cursed them for not having opposable thumbs while cold seeped up from the cement into her bones through her socks. Horror dawned. Her breath frosted. (I’m breathing faster just thinking about it.) Panic and cold threatened to shatter Linda’s middle-aged bones. Mindlessly, she began to run. Racing from locked window to locked window around the perimeter of the house, she began to think about her upcoming college statistics class and statistics in general, and how she might become a statistic—a lonely frozen statistic curled up under the hedge next to the driveway under a sheet of rare Florida ice. She would be a pointless statistic behind a nameless headline under a bush. She considered sobbing. Her stocking feet began to contract and curl from the cold. Her breath came in short hyperventilating gasps. Her lips chapped. On her third circuit around the house and without slowing down, she scrambled and hopped into a pair of rubber gardening boots she found under a Juniper bush. The boots, a brown leopard print rubber, were on the wrong feet. She continued her race around the house looking for any opening, loose latch, or magic portal back into the house too frightened to stop and put her boots on the “right feet.” The boots slowed me way, way down I can tell you, (and they slowed Linda way down too!!) She couldn’t help wondering what they—the keepers of the statistics—would think when they found her in the morning. Would they realize that she had been afraid and alone? Would they realize that panic and not stupidity had forced her to run around with her boots on the wrong feet? Would they wonder about her likes and dislikes, her dreams and hopes, her arthritis that made the cold feel like ice daggers? Would they find (her/my) body before the spring thaw? When Linda began to lose the feeling in her fingers and earlobes she began to laugh. It was as if she was high above the scene looking down at the strange sight of herself running wildly in a circle, under a crystalline sky, hair spiked to the four corners of the county, fluffy bathrobe flapping, boots curving off in the wrong direction. Her laughter did not sound sane—even to herself. The sudden realization that the truck was unlocked, with the garage door opener on the dash, and the side door open, made Linda reject her backup plan of crawling into a Rubbermaid storage container stuffed with hay and spending the remaining part of the night in the barn under a horse. And so I was saved . . . and Linda was too. Linda (Who Me?) Zern |
| People ask me, “Why have you written a weekly essay for over ten years—before blogs, before Twitter, before ink?” Okay, the truth is that nobody asks me why I write stuff, but they might ask me if I could run faster and catch them before they run away when I try to have a serious conversation about art, life, literature, and my compulsion to scratch things on walls with crayons. If anyone did ask me why I’ve written a weekly essay on everything from bubble gum removal from adult buttocks to the proper care and feeding of hamsters living in your oven insulation, I would say that there are three reasons: 1) Because I got tired of talking to myself. 2) The invention of crayons 3) And, the sheer, complete, total, unadulterated power of it (writing of course, not bubble gum removal from adult buttocks which is powerful in its own way) For example, when the cashier at Walmart makes fun of me for trying to get cash without buying anything, even though I had just charged three hundred dollars worth of potato chips and soda with a credit card, and I forgot about getting real money until it was too late, and she says, “What you think that you’ve got there—a magic money card? You got to buy something,” and then she turns to the shopper behind me and says, “I wish I had a magic money card,” I can reach for artistic vindication on the scales of literary justice. I can say to myself, “I’m going to write about you, cashier girl, and describe you, and record your meanness, and your sarcasm, in a funny way of course, and by changing all the obvious details like the big wart on the end of your nose!” That’s why writing is better than kickboxing for stress relief, and that’s why for ten years I’ve written it all down—the silliness, the sadness, the silly sadness that leads to wild chuckling over the eighty plus or minus years that constitutes life as we know it, unless it’s all a dream, of course, or the Matrix. So, this is my disclaimer: Be nice to me, or I’ll write about you in a completely unrecognizable way, but I’ll know, and in my heart I will chortle my silent triumph. Here’s to a wonderful fresh New Year and the understanding that my work is fiction and any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental—maybe. Linda (I’m Taking Notes!) Zern |
| “Okay, let’s go.” My husband of thirty-plus years jangled car keys at me. Surely the shock on my face could be seen from space. “What are you talking about? Go where?” My husband made that face he makes when he thinks that I’m being obtuse or uppity or stubborn. He makes that face a lot. “Sherwood, I’m in my bathrobe. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or where you think that we are going,” I yipped. I was, in fact, standing in my bathrobe—a fluffy yellow affair that I tied with a worn out purple poke-a-dot bathrobe belt because I had lost the belt to my present fluffy yellow bathrobe affair. I happen to know that I looked like an out of work circus clown. “We talked about it.” He was insistent. The furrows between my eyes became trenches. “We talked about it? In this life? Where my eyes open?” The trenches between my eyes collapsed into earthquake fault lines. “Sure, you know, that time when we talked about it.” “Honey, look at my face.” He looked at my face. “See this?” I said, pointing at my face. “This is shock. I could not be more shocked. Do you think that if we had talked about this I would look this shocked?” I pointed to my feet. “See these?” I wiggled my toes in my No-Nonsense socks from Walmart. “These are socks. I’m in my bathrobe, and I have no idea what you think we talked about. I am not dressed for going anywhere, nor will I be anytime soon.” For the first time, he seemed unsure of the alleged conversation. “Well, . . . maybe . . . you forgot.” I re-tied my purple poke-a-dot belt and tipped my furrowed forehead at him. “Maybe, and maybe you have conversations in your head that you think I can hear because you’re thinking really loudly.” His brow furrowed.The conversation deteriorated from that point, but at least I remember that it occurred in this dimension. I appreciate that my husband and I have been blissfully wedded for thirty-plus years. I appreciate that he thinks we have reached a state of sync that means we can read each other’s minds. I appreciate ESP. I just wish it were true. Well, maybe next year. Here’s to conversations that happen in real time and with audible words. Linda (Read My Lips—Out Loud) Zern |
| The Dignity of Man – Not Human beings are born in goo, go out of this life in gunk, and in between there’s a lot of body fluids, and anybody that prattles on about the dignity of man is probably planning to pull the plug on your respirator. Since when is life dignified? Our oldest daughter and her husband are welcoming their fourth child this summer—it will be a joyous, exciting, and thrilling event—but dignified it will not be. Recently she started the baby welcoming process by taking Zoe (aged 5), Conner (aged 3), and Kip (aged 1) to the lab with her to start her lab work, not realizing that she’d have to drag the three children into the waiting room bathroom with her when she “produced a urine sample.” She reported the following “dignified” conversation. Conner, at the top of his lungs, yelled, “Hey why are you peeing in that cup, mom? That’s ba-sgusting!” Laughter rolled through the waiting room, squeaking under the crack in the door. “Hey, mom I can see your penis.” Heather tried to pee in the cup and hush the loudmouth at the same time. Kip, fascinated with the bathroom acoustics, began experimenting with screaming. Zoe tried to hush both of her brothers. “Mom, why are peeing in that cup? Why?” Conner, never one to be derailed from a subject, continued shouting, “Yucky, I’m not drinking that pee.” Laughter wafted through the keyhole from the waiting room into the bathroom. Our daughter, giving up any fantasy of dignity, led her mouthy group across the lobby, carrying her own pee-pee in a cup. To celebrate the Thanksgiving season our daughter, our daughter-in-law, Sarah, and their friend, Jennie, decided to help their children build a facsimile of a Native American t-pee in my backyard out of bamboo poles and paper bags. It was adorable. The children drew crayon buffalo and stick figures on the t-pee. When the structure was assembled, the children (Emma, Zoe, Cameron, and Conner) crawled excitedly inside. They were adorable. Pictures were taken. Their mommies congratulated themselves on teaching their children Native American dignity and respect for diversity. Conner immediately crawled to the opening of the t-pee, pulled his britches down, and whizzed. His cousin, Emma crawled through the resulting Conner puddle, soaking her pants from knee to ankle. Her mother was horrified. Dignity evaporated. Later, Conner’s mommy, exhausted from t-pee making and pregnancy, observed, “Sarah thinks she wants a boy.” Heather paused. “She doesn’t.” Conner’s yell echoed through the house, “Mom, come wipe my butt.” Dignity is a myth, and it’s a pretty safe bet that anyone yabbing on about the dignity of mankind is 1) a lawyer 2) a politician, or 3) somebody looking to inherit. I say the sooner we abandon dignity, the sooner we’ll be able to laugh at—well, just about everything. Have a dignity free week. Linda (burpsnottoot) Zern |
| 1. And Sherwood did know his wife and did begat Aric, Heather, Maren, and Adam in the land between the two great waters, and Adam, even the youngest son, did begat Sadie and did help to raise Emma in a home that he and his goodly wife Sarah did buy-eth in the southly land of the Saintly Cloud. 2. And Heather with Phillip did begat Zoe, Conner, Kipling and even a fourth child, which did promise to come forth in the month of July of the year of our Lord two thousand and ten. 3. And Maren with her spouse, one T.J. of Titusville, did also begat a child that they did expect to bring forth in the summer of that selfsame year, even a month past that of her sister, even August. 4. And Aric did continue to go forth to battle in far and distant lands, protected by the hand of the Lord, and miracles, and the blessed military doctors of Brooks Medical Center of the burn unit in the land of Texas, a land of much American support for the sons of Helaman that did go forth to battle in the lands roundabout. 5. Whereas the rising generation of our tribe did grow much in goodness and understanding and did begin-eth to lose their teeth, ride bicycles, and to be taught somewhat in all the learning of their fathers and mothers. And the children, even the youngest of the rising generation, did learn to walk like unto Frankenstein and did lurch about as they went forth to hunt lost snack foods that did rolleth under various countertops and footstools. 6. And Sherwood with his wife Linda, even the keeper of the records, did have their wrestle before Babylon, Sherwood even among the infidel peoples, which did dwell in the cities of the great waters in the lands northward—even General Motors Corporation. And he did dwell with them from time to time and did work much with their numbers and with the voice of OnStar, a voice which did sound forth from Heaven to guide and comfort many who did bring forth sufficient money. 7. And I did wrestle before the math department of Valencia, with much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, so that I might acquire the learning of the long dead Egyptians, who did measure much of their pyramids so that they might torment all generations of mankind with their mathematics--also algebra, and I did rejoice in the day of my deliverance, even the end of the semester. 8. And I make no more accounting of our days, sufficeth to say, that we did yet dwell in peace and harmony in the land of our first inheritance and we did call forth our tribe often to both counsel and to purchase Chinese food on the last day of the week, even Fridays. And we did rejoice in our good fortune and our blessings and we did confess God’s hand in all our doings. 9. And now I make an end. |
| It’s My Birthday! Here are the facts: I was born feet first. My mother liked to tell me that if I had been born in a primitive country they would have left me on a flat rock to starve to death or be eaten by dingoes. To this day I have an irrational fear of flat rocks. When my father was told he had a daughter he said a bad word, which my mother recorded in my baby book. I suspect the last three words I will say in this lifetime will be bad. My baby brother was born fifteen months after me. He bit me a lot. In all my baby pictures I’m wearing long sleeves to cover the bite marks. The official story is that my brother was colicky, but I suspect demon possession and foul play. I grew up small, wearing a size two in the first grade, and big kids used to sit on me on the school bus. I never climbed the rope, but I could read before anybody else in my class. In high school, I attracted my husband by wearing pink shorts and a pink “Sweet Honesty” t-shirt. I haven’t worn pink shorts in a very long time, but I still wear “Sweet Honesty” perfume. He’s still attracted. We married and had four children—none of which were born feet first—but all of which have birthdays and belly buttons. I spent the WORST birthday of my life hanging from the second story eaves of our house in North Carolina, cleaning the gutters out before the big ice storm froze the water and gutter sludge in the gutters, forcing it up under the shingles, causing our roof to leak. It had already started to sleet when Sherwood made me climb the ladder, because he was too tubby to climb the ladder, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold a tubby man on a two-story ladder. It was terrible. There were frozen earthworms in those filthy gutters, and my gloves iced over in minutes, if not seconds. I couldn’t move my fingers, so I just sort of clubbed the icy muck out with my hands frozen into rigor-mortis claws. I cried. The tears froze to my cheeks. I sad bad words and condemned my husband’s use of procrastination as an alternative lifestyle choice. I turned forty-four that day and aged twelve years. The moral of the story is that it would have cost forty-bucks to have a truck full of Mexicans clean out our gutters. They were sad when I didn’t hire them. I was sad too. Today was a good birthday. I turned fifty-one, mowed the yard, and cleaned out the chicken coop. It could have been a lot worse, believe me. My family could have put me out on an ice flow shaped like a flat rock. Linda (Birthday Babe) Zern |
| College Age – The Final Frontier For thirty years I’ve avoided taking college algebra, by taking every other college class offered under the academic sun: Mythology, Geology, Psychology, Film-ology, and any class remotely connected with the assemblage of letters into words to form sentences, that when arranged into paragraphs line up to create academic papers called, “I Love to Hear Myself Sound Smart—a Lot.” You know essays. Me likey the word thingys. In the end, however, people started to notice that I have approximately 2,016 credits but no diploma, and boy have they gotten surly. “Graduate already,” a grouchy twenty-something youngish adult demanded of me. The youngish adult would have been easier to ignore except that it belonged to me, and I agree with it. It’s true. If I were my own kid, I would kick my own butt and say, “Graduate already, you bum.” Except that I’m having a bundle of fun—kind of. It’s fun to sit behind Johnny Whooten in a 7:00 am class and have him turn around and ask me about my mysterious Voodoo study habits. “How do you do it?” he asked. I noticed that my friend, Johnny Whooten, smelled of Wild Turkey and depravity at 7 am in the morning. “What’s that?” “The good grades, how do you do it?” I also noticed that Johnny Whooten’s right hand trembled as he held his pen. A spider eating a bird was tattooed on his wrist. The pen leaked ink. “I never skip class, read my assignments, do all my homework, take really good notes and then before the test, I re-copy my notes onto index cards which I commit to memory,” I said, pausing, trying to decide if I’d skipped anything. Johnny Whooten looked at me as if I had just picked HIS nose—in public. “Okay,” I said, trying again. “I sacrifice small children to a pagan idol that I keep in a shed in my backyard.” “Lucky,” he mumbled. Then Johnny Whooten nodded sagely, turned back to the front of the class, put his head down on his desk, and went into a Wild Turkey induced coma. I believe he was on scholarship. I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love the learning of new things, and listening to the young and parrot-like repeat, “ George Bush and conservatives are (insert expletive here.)” I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love bringing true diversity to my college campus and when teachers begin the semester by poling the students with, “Raise your hand if you’re a Republican,” then I get to raise my hand and say, “Is being a Republican going to be a problem for you?” And when those teachers ask, “Are you a Republican?” I get to say, “Why that’s none of your business, dearest professor o’ mine.” I would hurry up and graduate, except that I love making a perfect score on my college algebra test—which is a real, live college math and not sad math for sillies—and giving a little victory cheer when I see the smiley face under the one hundred percent mark. I got one of those today—a smiley face. My paper is on the refrigerator already. Don’t get me wrong. The day I finish with my college algebra class, I will be burning my overpriced, poorly designed algebra book on a pyre created from yellow legal pads filled with abstract mathematical scribbling and yard clippings—dancing pagan visitor’s welcome. When someone asked me how I managed to make an ‘A’ on my algebra test, knowing my tragic math history, I said, “I study parts of my anatomy off.” A girl next to me translated. When she finished describing which bits of anatomy were required in the studying off process and she continued to be met with blank stares, I said, “Okay, actually, I sacrifice small children to a pagan idol.” Several people nodded and one young man made a note. Gosh it’s going to be hard to graduate. Linda (Major-Minor) Zern |
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