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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 |
| “Kip’s eating something,” my daughter yelled, pointing at her just turned one-year old. “I think it’s a dead frog.” Swooping down from above, I pulled my grandson onto my lap and with a swish of my right pointer finger, I swiped his mouth and out popped a desiccated, mummified tree frog. Only later would I realize how practiced my actions had been—bend, reach, pull, swipe, empty oral cavity. “Well?” my daughter wanted to know. “Yep,” I said, “Dead frog.” I flipped the dead frog onto the coffee table in front of me. “Ba-scussting,” observed the frog eater’s sister. “No! Disgusting is the fact that the frog was almost re-animated into a zombie frog because of your brother’s magic baby spit.” She stared at the now slimy dead frog looking for signs of zombie life. The one-year old howled for more dead frog. Except ye . . . become as a little child. My youngest son, Adam, waxed eloquent on the subject of Ayn Rand’s theories of the importance of individualism in opposition to the abstraction of the collective mentality by saying, “You know of course what Ayn Rand said about individualism in opposition to the abstraction of the collective mentality . . .” My son had just raised his hand to punctuate a particularly salient point, when his four-year old stepdaughter turned away from her lunch plate to spit a chewed up noodle in a gooey wad at his feet. He lost his train of thought. I lost my train of thought. Then, with eyebrows raised and totally mystified, he asked the two questions we all want to ask everyone, “Why did you do that? Why would anyone want to do that?” Suffer little children . . . and forbid them not. “Grab that kid. He’s got no pants on,” someone shouted as a random two-year old streaked through the kitchen. Various people yelled. A few parental-types took off in hot pursuit. Someone yelled, “Why won’t that kid keep his pants on?” “Somebody find his pants,” someone else shouted. Pants hunters were dispatched. The pants-less wonder jumped onto the couch and began a pants-less dance. Several people pointed and laughed—mostly kids and one grandfather. Eventually, the nudist was soon wrestled to the ground and re-pants. Rumor has it that, of our two-year old grandson, a tiny girl from our church told her mother. “That’s Conner-Boy. He’s so funny. He takes his pants off in the nursery.” . . . for of such is the kingdom of heaven. My observations of the young and restless leads me to believe that heaven will be a very exciting place—full of fun and unexpected surprises. Then I watch Kip and Sadie learning to walk, and realize that no matter how many times they fall down—they ALWAYS get up--ALWAYS, and how full of hugs and kisses my grand daughters (Emma and Zoe) are, and how clearly Conner sees the world—mean people are bad and nice people are good. He sees no silly gray ambiguities the way we adults need to. My grandchildren teach me about tenacity, and kindness, and clarity—and heaven, and I do believe. Linda (Cup Runneth Over) Zern |
| “This butterfly net won’t hurt you, little chick! Here little, chick, chick. Come here.” When you hear yourself saying something like this audibly, you will soon begin wondering exactly when—day, hour, minute—you crossed that strange, invisible line between “nice lady” and “the nut.” One minute you’re being born, feet first or breech, just like those babies they left under a bush on some primal savannah for the hyenas to eat, because everyone knows that proper babies come head first, and it’s the contrary ones that come feet first, so it was tradition to get rid of those feet-first-babies under a bush before they could start real trouble—one minute you’re being born—wrong, and the next minute you’re chasing chickens with a butterfly net. It’s then that you ask yourself, “How did this happen? Why did the dignity train leave without me? When did it leave? How come Hollywood can’t make movies that don’t preach up a storm about everything? Why is that last sentence a double negative?” Then the chicken you’re chasing with a butterfly net darts right, but you were set to dodge left, and the five-pound Yorkshire Terrier that Santa brought to your grand daughter, but somehow he dropped off at your house by accident, joins in the chase and darts both right and left arriving at the screaming, fleeing chicken first, and bites it on the head, making you wonder why chicken retrieval and recovery has somehow fallen under your job description. Before you can say, “Leave that baby under that bush over there,” you’ve caught Ploodle, the terrier, in your butterfly net. His wet little nose presses against the green netting. The chicken’s head is in his mouth. The chicken’s screaming beak pokes through the netting—screaming at you. You drag Ploodle off the chicken’s bony little head, and toss the dog by his scruffy scruff onto the back porch. The chicken lives—and escapes. With renewed determination, you jump back into the chicken-chasing fray. Noticing that there are now, two chickens running wild in the yard. They’ve escaped from the dog crate you keep them in during the day, because you pulled the plastic poop tray out so that the chickens could peck at the ground and learn to be real chickens, before you move them from the office shower where they are now living, at night, to the chicken coop you finished roofing last summer. These are special chickens you remember because they came in the mail, in a box that cheeped, which you found charming, so you dodge left with your butterfly net while the chickens dart right. In the end, you catch both pure bred, special mail order chickens from Minnesota and return them to the dog crate with their eight crate mates. Ploodle, who believes with all his heart that all chickens are evil and are plotting to invade your home, take your women, and steal your precious metals, has not stopped barking throughout the entire butterfly net, chicken chasing scene. You pray that he will not be called to testify at the mental competency hearing. These are the moments in a person’s life that I like to call the flaming cascade of unintended consequences: if I hadn’t ordered chickens, I would never have had to chase them around with a butterfly net, which sent Ploodle into a chicken killing frenzy, that made me crazy enough to yell strange things to chickens, which might have been overheard by a psychiatrist who might have been strolling by the backyard of our “farm,” where there’s a chicken coop, built by Jack or somebody. Just think, once upon a time, I would have been one of those kids that you left under a bush for the hyenas and then I would have never ordered those idiot chickens. Linda (Chicken Chaser) Zern |
| Where the Devil Washes Up Happy Halloween The children knew better than to trick-or-treat at the house at the end of Kissimmee Park Road. They knew better. As they walked down the driveway they noticed a pitchfork, its tines twisted and broken, a pile of mulch half grown over with weeds, cut grass resting like the lumps of bison bones strewn across the lawn, and the neglect of fading flowers withering along the walkway. The children knew better than to trick-or-treat at the house at the end of Kissimmee Park Road, but they went anyway. A single light bulb flickered sadly on the front porch, covered by the halfhearted attempts of several Daddy-Long-Legged spiders, their webs looking like tattered napkins left too long in the rain, a tragic reminder of some ruined picnic. The children stood on the welcome mat staring at the front door where a giant tree frog hunkered on the door jam just over their heads, its throat quivering in silent rhythm to the anemic buzzing of cicadas. The frog pooped. The children knocked. As the door opened a great bubble of air, pregnant with the smell of rotten eggs and methane, bulged out and over the children, breaking just over their heads with a silly popping noise. Screaming, the boy turned to his sister and yelled, “Run! The house smells like a giant fart.” The children, running back the way they had come, tried to hold their breath, in between screeching and flailing, the faint smell of sulfur clinging to their costumes and hair. Turning to her husband, the lady of the house said, “Sherwood, we really need to do something about our well water. I’m afraid people are going to start thinking that the devil lives in our bathroom, where he flushes the potty a lot.” Sherwood, the man of the house sighed, and said, “Yeah, it’s like soaking in hell’s hot tub for stinky sulfur water.” He sighed again. “I’ll put it on the list.” The couple looked at the retreating trick-or-treaters, sniffed each other’s hair, shrugged their shoulders, and sifted through the Halloween candy, looking for the real chocolate. Linda (Rotten Eggs) Zern |
| “Run,” I screamed. “Go! Go! Go!” I turned the van key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. In the distance, the glare of eyes like cold, hard glass swung toward us. Aric and Heather were the first to stumble their way from the house to our family van. Heather tripped and staggered halfway to the open door of the van, and Aric, without thought for his own welfare, turned back, grabbed her by her shirt, and began to pull her through the driveway dust to safety. (He grew up to be a soldier. Heather grew up to be a ballerina.) Maren hustled across the yard next, diving headfirst into the van. (She grew up to be a political science major.) In the distance a small, white juggernaut of rage fixated on our van, and began its headlong pursuit of us. I thought I caught a glimpse of a few white feathers exploding up from the racing, pumping body to waft away in the afternoon breeze. “Move it!” I revved the gas. Adam, dragging his own diaper bag, toddled to the car to be hauled headfirst into the vehicle by his siblings. (Adam grew up to be an exceptional daddy.) I heard the van door bang shut. The children strapped each other in for the getaway. I slammed the gas pedal down and gunned the van—gravel spewing from the rear tires. The small white body covered in feathers gained momentum, hunkered down close to the ground, clawed feet tearing at the turf, beak and burning eye pointed at our now retreating van. We cleared the driveway. Once we fishtailed onto the paved road, I said, “We made it.” The children cheered. In the rearview mirror, I observed the little, white rooster raise its head in frustration and crow a challenge at the back of our van. Light glinted off of its razor-like spurs. “Psycho chicken,” I muttered to no one at all. I headed to the library with my four children and tried to ignore the feeling of dread that sat like a lump in my stomach, knowing that it (that miserable, filthy rooster) would probably be hiding in the bushes when we got back—waiting, watching—plotting. “Psycho chicken,” I repeated in disgust. It was too. I saw that chicken attack a boy on a bicycle—more than once. Maybe the meanest rooster I have ever been acquainted with, that rooster would stop doing whatever it was doing when it saw us in the yard and run, full out, to get a chance to rake us with its spurs. Sometimes it would run two, three, or four football fields to get at us. We started having to go outside armed with brooms and swords. It was chicken terrorism at its worst. Not all chickens are created equal, though. We once had another rooster that got his butt whooped in the barnyard so badly, he ran away. He ran away to our mailbox, where he sat in the wind and rain—alone—for the longest time, waiting for the mailperson everyday, bedraggled and pitiful (the chicken not the mailperson) until some dark unknown forces carried him away—never to be heard of again. I suspect the mailperson. Then there was Edger the Chicken. We got Edger as a chick, and chicks imprint on the first thing that they see when they hatch, and in this case, Edger imprinted on our son, Adam. Edger turned out to be a little brown hen that would follow Adam around like a dog, waiting for Adam to feed her juicy crickets because Edger thought that Adam was its mother. Adam still speaks fondly of Edger. Once, when our chickens got into the horse worm medicine and poisoned themselves, it fell to my husband to “put them out of their blind-staggering-around chicken misery.” There is a little known clause in the Man Manual (Section B, Paragraph 6, Sub-Heading 12-A, titled - Duties of the Executioner) that reads, “All distasteful and potentially icky tasks fall to the man or man surrogate in any causal relationship—‘cause if you don’t kill that sick critter you’re going to wish that you had.” The problem is that chicken killing has gone somewhat out of fashion, and so my husband was at something of a loss as to how best to put the chickens out of their worm poisoned misery. Watching the staggering chickens stagger about, he said, “What? Do I smother them with a pillow?” “Not my pillow,” I replied. My husband is no chicken. He used his own pillow. This has been a discussion of chickens—real live pecking chicken animals. This should in no way be seen as a symbolic discussion of some of the two-legged human chickens I have know throughout my life. Like the psycho chicken person who cannot stand to see anyone, anywhere enjoying this life more than themselves, so they want to peck you to death if they can, or the cowardly chicken type, who refuses to return to the war once he or she has lost a battle or two, or the Edger chickens who somewhere along the line learn to wait around for everyone else to catch their crickets for them—good for pets, not so good for folks. This has been a discussion about chickens and nothing but the chickens. Linda (Chicken Master) Zern |
| In 1971, Jane Goodall, wrote a book called "In the Shadow of Man" about chimpanzees. It was about a woman who hid behind bushes and peeked at chimpanzees. Taking my cue from Ms. Goodall, I too have been hiding behind native foliage (the plastic fichus tree) peeking at a rare and skittery species—the Americanus Computer Engineerus. These are my observations. The Americanus Computer Engineerus (common name: Key Banger or Computer Guy) is a shy creature given to a solitary existence foraging among plastic fichus trees, behind rickety temporary walls constructed of mud and palm fronds called cubicles. Key Bangers often decorate their mud and palm frond constructions with family photos, free posters, and calendars depicting attractive computer components. Face to face communication is unusual among Key Bangers. One fine day under the strange pulsating rays of the florescent bulbs preferred by the Eastern Key Banger, my research associate and I observed a rare one on one Key Banger exchange. “Well, I’m going to lunch.” A juvenile Key Banger attempted to address a more senior Key Banger. An awkward pause, of approximately three minutes passed while the Key Bangers avoided eye contact. My research associate and I exchanged strained looks. The senior Key Banger scratched the back of his neck while sitting in stony silence. “Are they communicating?” “Yes, but it’s very subtle,” I assured my associate. “How can you tell?” he inquired. “Because I feel itchy and wildly uncomfortable.” At long last, the senior Key Banger said, “Well, have a good lunch.” I scribbled a few notes into a spiral ring notebook and double underlined the words “confirm the existence of Key Banger Hubs.” The lowland natives of fichus tree land related to me that they had observed the curious phenomenon of large gatherings of Americanus Computer Engineerus gathering in hubs. They described these hubs as a gaggle of computer consultants (i.e. Key Bangers) congregating at “conferences,” huddled in corners, sitting in bean bag chairs, banging at keys. The natives assured me that it is possible to observe these gatherings only if one is careful to stay downwind so as not to spook the hub. I am determined to observe a hub, first hand. It turns out that I am married to an Americanus Computer Engineerus. My husband, a first rate example of a Key Banger, migrates weekly, and then returns to our nest to tape receipts to notebook paper. He’s really good at it. The receipts are really flat and smooth when he gets done. I always tell him how nice they look. He also likes to read a book with a prancing horse on the cover called “Jakarta Struts” and another book with a coffee cup on the cover. The coffee cup book is about “Java Beans.” I tell the grand children that their Poppy is in the circus, and that he’s a bareback trick rider. They love to hear stories about how Poppy can balance a coffee cup on his head while his horse, Jakarta, prances around the ring. My research continues. We have been married thirty-one years in October and I feel confident that any day now, I will master the Key Banger language called Acronym, which is an ancient form of Sumerian—ASAP, PDQ, HTTP. Jane Goodall set the standard for fieldwork while peeking at chimpanzees. When she had a baby boy she named him Grub. Jane Goodall is my hero for helping me understand that it is possible to understand those different than ourselves if we are observant, patient, and willing to name our children names like Grub. Linda (Grubbing for Answers) Zern |
| Once upon a time the Egyptians lived in bedroom communities known as mud holes. The problem with these bedroom mud holes is that they not only lacked access to decent museums featuring mummies, but the Egyptian’s backyards disappeared into the Nile River—once, twice, sometimes seventy-two times a month at high tide. This caused a lot of confusion when the mud overlapped. No one knew where the chain link fence guys should put in the new fences or who belonged to which papyrus patch. It was a mud hole mess—all the time. So the Egyptians invented algebra, which helped them keep their mind off of the mess in their back yards. Until one day a guy named Jut, realized that he could get back at his neighbors, whom he suspected of fudging the chain link fence lines, by insisting that the local school board force his neighbor’s children to learn algebra which kept them at home in their hovels and out of Jut’s mud. Jut was a real joker. Algebra became a national craze, right up there with “Dancing With the Pharaoh’s Architect.” Then Muslims conquered everyone with their swords and their peaceful interest in spreading the use of the zero. Not wanting to be the only ones made miserable by mathematics, the Muslims continued conquering—well, everyone, proving that math makes people overly enthusiastic, perhaps even manic-depressive. Proof, also, that the Arab nations are to blame for the widespread heartbreak caused by algorithms, the word “algebra” is, in fact, an Arabic word meaning “A Poo-Poo Platter of Numbers for Occidental Suckers.” In the 19th century British mathematicians took up the math gauntlet, which is why “the colonies” kicked their junk in 1776. “Taxation without representation” was a popular catchphrase in the colonies that would later come to mean that the new, shiny government would require all college students to take College Algebra rather than taking Accounting, so that no one would know how much taxation without representation they (the government) would actually be doing in the future, because it was going to be a lot. That’s how I made a “D” on my first quiz in College Algebra. I hate Jut. It is my opinion that cultures that invent things like the zero are silly people bent on cornering the market of world oil supplies, under the code name of silly looking letters like OPEC (note: the use of the silly zero shaped letter at the beginning of the still sillier sounding code word.) I rest my case. Linda (Keeper of the History) Zern |
“I have a package for **Jack Silas,” the man, in the snappy delivery uniform, informed me. “He’s dead,” I said. “Sorry, I’ll notify,” he hesitated checking the return address on the package, “hmmm, someone . . . and, I am sorry.” The man in the snappy delivery uniform waved the package over his head with that slightly uncomfortable shuffling of the feet that indicates that the conversation might be in danger of drifting toward one or two potentially toxic subjects such as—death—or, the trade war with China caused by over protectionism and un-do union influence on our elected officials. I reassured him. “Oh no, don’t worry. Jack’s been dead forever. He’s a ghost now. Sometimes people see him when they wake up from a nap on the couch.” I smiled, pointing to the actual haunted couch. The man in the snappy delivery uniform started backing away from me still waving the package, only now he was waving it in front of him. He stumbled over a trailing stem of pink vinca as he continued to make his get-away through my flowerbed. Sightings of our ghost, Jack Silas, have included one incident on the wooden bridge that covers our well, one example of shimmery air hovering over the couch post bedtime, a feeling of extreme unease resulting in one family member (who will remain nameless) arming himself with a hammer and wandering around the house all night, and an actual visual sighting in the laundry room, on laundry day, near the dryer—by me. Jack was wearing a striped shirt, no pants. It’s not that Jack wasn’t wearing pants. He might have been. It’s that he was see-through on the bottom—just to clarify. Having a ghost is better than having a dog for the assigning of blame when playing the family blame game. Stuff gets lost. It’s the ghost. Unexplained messes, smudges, dirt, or fart smells, it’s the ghost. Weirdly broken tchotchkes that the three-year old, Conner-boy, may or may not have been playing with—then that darn ghost has been at it again. Unknown noises, screams, wails, shrieks, and coughing—inside the walls—well, then obviously the ghost is kicking up his heels, or you might have squirrels. A ghost can be very handy. I recommend having a ghost—except when they start receiving mail—then the situation just gets so complicated. I mean how do you handle the forwarding issue? I have been openly mocked for reporting my personal sighting of Jack Silas, the ghost, but I shall not recant. I did, in fact, see a misty figure of ghostly proportions on laundry day, his appearance so real that I thought someone had walked into the laundry room, and so real in fact, that I turned to speak to that person. I gasped and started to cry when I noticed that the “person” was wearing a striped t-shirt and no pants. The kid who carried the hammer around all night, heard me gasp, clear across the house, and he makes the most fun of me, which is rich when you consider the hammer stunt. I can’t help it if I see dead people, for some of us the veil is very thin, and the next world is just a forwarding address away. Linda (Ghost Whisperer) Zern ** The name has been changed to protect the ghost! |
“Nice hat,” I told five-year old Zoe when she arrived at my house. She walked through my garage, looking jaunty in giant pink plastic earrings and necklace, elbow length pink opera gloves, and a pink ball cap with glitter stripes. “I don’t want the spiders to fall on my head,” Zoe replied matter-of-factly, adjusting the My-Little-Pony purse on her shoulder and pulling her hat down over her ears. I looked up. Spider webs, their keepers busily spinning, weaving, and repairing, formed a crisscross pattern of spider lace over our heads, a canopy of creepy crawler hammocks filled with desiccated bodies that stretched across the garage ceiling in ever more complicated and convoluted territorial boundaries. Okay, okay, sorry . . . bottom line . . . there are a lot of spiders in my garage. “Hey! Do you see what’s in those spider webs?” Three-year old, Conner, joining the party, squinted at the nearest spider herd and said, “Skee-toes.” “That’s right, skee-toes; Ugh, I mean mosquitoes. Exactly.” Zoe adjusted her hat so that it tipped rakishly over her right eye. I said, “Children, YaYa’s spiders are keeping us from being carried away by skee-toes; I mean mosquitoes; I mean blood suckers.” They both frowned. Eyes narrowing, Zoe asked, “Do spiders suck blood?” “Yes, I mean . . . no, not our blood . . . bug blood, oh forget it; come in and get a cookie.” Sitting at the dining room table, cookie crumbs trailing across the surface, Conner looked up at my dining room light fixture, a faux antique deal, complete with fake cracks, a crackle finish, and a pesky filigree of tiny spider webs that resist my every attempt at spider eradication. “YaYa?” Conner asked. “Yes.” “You like Haunted Mansion Disney?” He flashed his dimples. “Hey, funny boy, have another cookie.” FYI - I’ve become the little, old lady that lives in the spooky house filled with spiders and haunted light fixtures, so, my new motto is: “Spiders is good. They eats the cockroaches.” (from Fletch Lives) Linda (Skeeter) Zern |
When Mr. Medina decided to dredge his pond out, a pond with a three-inch film of evil green slime and the bones of a bison carcass protruding from the exposed muck, we—his next-door neighbors—mocked, scoffed, and scorned. It had not rained for a very long time here in Florida, being the dry season, and all. We were skeptical, a skepticism that bordered on snarkiness. It hadn’t rained in so long, that Zoe, an observant five-year old grand-girl, wanted to know why the whole world was “crunchy.” We called Mr. Medina’s pond project “Medina’s folly.” Smirking, we watched when the pumps, emptied out the remaining dregs of green scum and slime from the old pond. Ducks swam across Mr. Medina’s pasture through the pumped out remnants of leftover pond water. We laughed when the giant digger machine arrived to scratch and scoop out, what appeared to be—easily—a twenty-five to six hundred foot deep hole directly to the center of the earth. I chortled while trying to get my dog (who has an irrational fear of giant digger machines) to relax long enough to “go potty” as the machine belched and burped its way deeper and deeper into the bowls of the earth. Without remorse and feeling superior, I remarked, “That is going to be the biggest glass half empty in the world.” When the private investigator in the Hawaiian shirt showed up asking questions about my neighbor, Mr. Medina, I sold him out, if not immediately, then pretty close to immediately. The man, with a New Jersey accent, and wearing one crazy floral print of a shirt, asked, “Does Mr. Medina still reside next-door, to the best of your knowledge?” “Who wants to know?” I’m not a complete push over. He was pretty sweaty when he admitted, “I’m a private investigator.” “Nice shirt.” I did not ask for identification. The shirt was enough for me. He frowned and said, “I just need to make sure that Mr. Medina lives over there.” He pointed, sweat dripping from his pointer finger. It had not rained in a long, dry time. I squinted into the sinking blaze of the hot raw sun. That sweaty finger got to me. I said, “Yep, he lives there and he’s digging the mother of all holes in his back yard—plenty deep enough to throw a body into; if you know what I mean?” I paused and winked. “I don’t know if that helps, but there it is.” The private investigator blinked sweat out of his eyes, thanked me, did not take notes, and left. Later, I wondered if the private investigator had actually been 1) a spy 2) an assassin 3 ) a retired KGB agent, or 4) a county hole inspector. I suffer from an excess of imagination. No more was heard on the subject. It became a family habit on Sunday afternoons to stand at the fence separating Mr. Medina’s property from our property and stare into the enormous empty hole and say things like, “Keep on eye on Mrs. Medina.” “How many of those little bottles of water do you think it’s going to take? We’ve got a pool going—no pun intended.” “If we find our garden hoses missing, we’ll know who took ‘em.” You know, smart aleck stuff like that. On the day the giant digger machine finished, it began to rain, and did not stop until Mr. Medina’s hole filled to the brim, allowing ducks to swim in lazy circles across its surface, their chubby bodies dipping and splashing in an excess of water fowl frolic. Last Sunday, from under an umbrella with a Mickey Mouse cartoon on it, and while watching a mother duck and her twelve baby ducks sail regally across the pond, our family admired the gentle waves caused by a soft summer breeze that rippled the surface of the now brimming hole. Rain pockmarked the water. Waves lapped at the edges of the pond. There were no snarky comments, no snide hectoring—only awe and admiration. Phillip said, “He knew. Somehow he knew that the rain would come.” Adam said, “It’s like living next to Noah.” I sighed, “Wow! Imagine how I feel. I ratted Noah out to a private investigator.” “Oh ye, of little faith, wait and watch for the coming of the summer rains in due season and dig while you can still find the shovel and before the neighbors tattle.” (Book of Zern 5: 21) |
| In the weak sunshine of a Florida winter, it is customary for some Floridians to sit on their septic tanks, their faces tipped up to the sky, their sinuses exposed to the gentle medicinal comfort of the sun’s warmth, their hope as raw as their throats that God and nature will heal them of their Ebola-Rhino-Flu-Plague. Okay, sometimes I pull a lawn chair over to the septic tank and sit in the sun and hope that it will make me feel better when I’m sick. Sometimes, Phillip, my son-in-law, brings the grandkids over and sits on the septic tank with me. What can I say? It’s Saint Cloud. Once upon a time, we (Philip and I) sat in the sun on the septic tank. I was feeling as weak as two kittens in a sinking sack from Ebola-Rhino-Flu-Plague, while Conner and Zoe (the grand-kidlets) cavorted merrily under a Japanese Plum tree. Zoe sang, “Fruit-fruit-fruit, I want two fruits.” Conner pooped in his pants. The world spun gently, right up to the point when Conner, poop in drawers, stumbled in the direction of a strange, horned, white goat that had mysteriously appeared in our yard, having journeyed from somewhere beyond next door. “Phillip, grab that boy before Billy Goat Gruff knocks your kid down.” The goat flipped his scraggly beard in the direction of my voice. Phillip ran and scooped Conner up, setting him next to me in my pool of medicinal sunshine on the septic tank. The goat, a smallish—no higher than my knee variety—with dirty blond hair and “come hither” yellow devil eyes, started a slow determined trot in our direction. Phillip, never a lover of goats or farm creatures in general, said, “What does it want with us?” He sounded nervous—also squeamish. “Oh, he’s probably just seeing what’s what.” I tried to sound confident. The goat kept trotting. I closed my eyes in exhaustion brought on by the Ebola-Rhino-Flu-Plague. The odor of goat, BOY goat, engulfed me, and wow, did he smell close! When I opened my eyes, it was to the sight of this stinker of a goat trying to French kiss the sleeve of my shirt and the sound of obscene noises of goat love. I bolted out of my lawn chair. I yelled, “Or he could be looking for a date.” The goat made a lunge at my leg. I dodged. “Grab the kids before it’s too late—this stinky goat is in full on goat whoopee love mode.” Phillip scooped up Conner but Zoe, misunderstanding what I had said, began running wildly around waving and yelling, “Go away stinger goat. Go away.” Confused, but hopeful, the goat surveyed the scene and then lunged at the closest leg—Phillip’s leg. Zoe waved and yelled, “Leave my daddy’s leg alone.” “It’s having its’ way with your leg,” I screamed, as I ripped the garden house from the side of the house. “Run!” I ordered. Expecting a torrent of water, I turned the spigot on full blast, but lying advertising and crap marketing had given me a false sense of security in my new never-kink hose. A weak drip of water taunted me, and I cringed to see more crimps and kinks than hose. Phillip shrieked. Zoe shrieked. “Bad Stinger Goat!!” I whipped the hose from side to side to un-kink the kinks and to defend whatever honor Phillip had left in his right leg. The goat continued to lust. Finally, the hose kinks came free and I fire-hosed that nasty, stinker of a goat. The goat loved it. The distraction gave Phillip enough of a head start that he, Conner, and Zoe made it to the screened porch. I brought up the rear, not two steps ahead of the now wet and super rank horn-dog of a goat. What I saw in my son-in-law’s eyes still brings a shudder to my soul. What he said next I cannot forget. “I showed fear,” he said. “I showed fear.” He hung his head. Conner tried to pet the goat through the porch screen. I tipped over a lawn table and shoved it against the screen door. “You smell like a bad stinger goat,” I said, avoiding Phillip’s eyes. “I hope you have a change of clothes.” Before he finished slinking off to wash himself, I said, “We will never speak of this.” His chin collapsed onto his chest. He continued slinking. Somewhere in the yard a goat bawled his loneliness. This is the story that I started my website with several years ago. To catch up on all my tales of hose kinks, goat attacks, and family shame check out <zippityzerns.com> |
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