Two Girls and a Kitty Cat

“But I want to be a kitty cat,” Emma (age five) said.

I found this a little surprising. Usually Emma wants to be a sparkle unicorn. I looked at Zoe and Isabel (both six) to assess the degree that diplomatic negotiations had deteriorated in little girl world.

“Well that sounds like a lot of fun. I like to pretend I’m a kitty cat all the time, and then I take a nap on a rug in the sun.”

Zoe and Isabel ignored me. What I liked, wished, or wanted was pointless to the debate, that was obvious.

“But we want to play ‘three sisters,’ not ‘two sisters and a kitty cat,’” Zoe said. Her chin was lifted. Her arms crossed. Negotiations had reached the crisis point.

Isabel nodded and crossed her arms. I tried the bright side approach.

“But doesn’t ‘two sisters and a kitty cat’ sound like some fun.”

“No.” Zoe added a frown to her crossed arms.

“Why?”

“Because we always play ‘two sisters and a kitty cat.’ We want Emma to be a girl, not an animal.”

Emma moaned or maybe meowed.

“Because,” Zoe continued, “if Emma is a kitty cat then we have to chase her with nets and try to catch her.”

I could see their point. I hate when I have to chase my friends with nets. It’s fun for a couple of spins around the old track and field but before you know it, you’re dizzy and thirsty.

“But I want to be a kitty cat,” Emma said. She then began to groom herself with her tongue.

We were at an impasse—‘two sisters and a kitty cat’ is not ‘three sisters and no kitty cat,’ no matter how you slice the cat treats. Someone was going to be sad, mad, or disappointed. I was fresh out of win-win solutions for girl-world, so I retreated to grown up got-no-clue-world.

“Well, you girls work it out,” I said.

And that’s when Zoe lobbed a surface to air missile at a small South Korean island. NO! I’m kidding. Actually, I don’t know what happened. No punches were thrown. No screaming was overheard. No missiles were launched.

“Well, you girls work it out,” I had said.

And they did.

Somehow, someway, they did— without adult intervention. I wish I’d eavesdropped.

When I was a kid living in Titusville, our moms would kick us out of the house in the morning, throw PBJ sandwiches at us at noon, make us drink water out of the hose, and not let us come inside until the mosquito fog trucks rolled down Rose Marie Drive. We, the neighborhood kids, played hopscotch and Chinese jump rope like they were Olympic sports, snitched drywall chalk from construction sites, and played stickball until someone got mad or hurt. If you went inside you had to take a nap. No one went inside.

Parents were not consulted unless stitches were required.

The big kids were the bosses and the little kids were allowed to live and play, if we did it quietly and didn’t whine.

It wasn’t fair. It was life. It was good preparation for the world as it would be, not as we wished it could be. And we learned to work it out.

Zoe stomped into her grandfather’s home office frustrated with her five-year old cousin.

“Poppy, I just want Emma to be a regular girl and play with me.”

“What does Emma want?” he asked.

“To be a sparkle unicorn. Emma always wants to be a sparkle unicorn or a white seal.”

“Well, what should we do about that?”

Zoe batted her eyelashes.

“Poppy? Will you be a girl and come and play with me?”

“Sure. But why don’t we let Emma play too and be a sparkle unicorn?”

“Okay.”

And they worked it out.

Linda (Regular Girl) Zern

Travel Fast, Travel Naked

I sent my husband to the airport with the following note:

Dear TSA and Department of Homeland Security,

Please excuse my husband from being felt up by strange men every single week because of his anomaly. His anomaly is just fat. His doctor says its just “one of those things,” and he’s had this pocket or lump of fat for thirty years. It is benign. It poses no threat to national security. It is entirely a coincidence that the fat deposit appears to be living in the pocket of his pants.

Sincerely, His Wife

PS

I believe the fat deposit is the place where all the bacon my husband eats goes to die.

“How did the note from your wife [that would be me] go over with the TSA?” I wanted to know.

“It didn’t.”

“Didn’t you get felt up again, anomaly boy?”

“Nope, I just didn’t get into the naked-scanner-junk-touching line.”

“But I thought . . .”

“Nope. Not all the security lines have the Peeping Tom machines. I just got in the regular line: shoes, belt, laptop.”

He looked at me. I looked at him.

“Do you think the terrorists know about this regular line stuff?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he said, shrugging.

“Tell me something. If you were a terrorist, would you put powdered bomb bits in your panties or in one of those Christmas salamis you can mail to Greenland via the cargo hold of a big old airplane full of cheerleaders on their way to Disney World?”

I looked at him. He looked at me.

“So you probably won’t need that note about your fat lump anymore?”

“Nope. Besides I have a plan of my own to protest the Peeping Tom machines next time I get stuck in one of those lines.”

“Do I want to know?”

He looked at me. I looked at him—with squinty eyes.

He got that “I’ve been a bad boy since I was twelve” look on his face.

“I’ll show the TSA an anomaly they won’t soon forget.”

“Will this display be animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

He smiled.

People criticize me for watching cable news every waking hour of every waking day, but what they don’t understand is that I HAVE to watch cable news non-stop. How else am I going to know when Sherwood’s carted off to TSA strip search land, deported to the gulag of misfit toys, and branded a dirty rotten salami smuggler? Hmmmmmm?

Linda (Travel Advisory!) Zern

Monkey Chic

“You can’t wear seventeen monkeys to church.”

Zoe, my six-year old granddaughter, had come to church literally draped in monkeys. She had two to twenty monkeys Velcro-ed around her neck. There were monkey bracelets wrapped around her wrists. She had thrown a monkey backpack over her shoulders and topped the entire monkey collection off with a monkey hat.

Zoe glowed with pride in her accessorizing acumen.

She looked like a zoo exhibit had exploded onto her body.

The ensuing conversation between Zoe’s father and Zoe (better known as Cheetah Girl Queen of the Jungle) over the appropriate number of monkeys a person should wear to church lasted the major part of our church service and included tears, frustration, and gnashing of teeth. And that was just the Dad.

Arguments that do not work to de-monkey a monkey girl include:

“Zoe, no one else is wearing thirty-three monkeys to church.”

“Zoe, mommy isn’t wearing twenty-seven monkeys to church.”

“Zoe, all those monkeys are going to scare the babies.”

“Zoe, no one will be able to concentrate on the service, because they’ll be trying to count the monkeys on your body.”

“Zoe, all the other children will want your monkeys and they’ll cry.”

“Zoe, the monkeys are making your father break out in monkey pox.”

“Zoe, you’re going to cause a riot.”

“Zoe, take off the monkeys.”

“Zoe, NO MONKEYS!”

“Oh, let her wear the monkeys.” This from her Poppy, who would let the grandchildren go to church in their underwear, carrying flyswatters if they wanted to.

There are people who climb great mountains. There are people who explore active volcanoes. There are people who show up at Wal-Mart at four in the morning, on black Friday, to be the first to buy the Griddler by Cuisinart for one dollar.


These people are known as thrill seekers—also nuts.

All of these people combined cannot hope to experience the stamina and courage required to argue the taste level of monkey fashion with a six-year old. Parenting is the ultimate extreme sport, right up there with bungee jumping into a river using a chain of monkeys Velcro-ed to a bridge railing.

For one long year, my youngest son, Adam, refused to leave the house until his sisters tied his hair up in a rubber band. His hair stuck out of his head like a hair horn, but since he was my fourth child and my second son, I knew better than to care. I was numb, which is another way of saying I had cried, “Uncle,” quietly.

When Adam could finally talk, he told us his rubber-banded hair horn was his “feather.” Who knew Adam had been embracing his Native American heritage and had been reaching out to his ancestors all that time?

Climb a great mountain if you must. Dance about the rim of a spewing volcano if you dare.


But if you really want the thrill of unpredictability, the raw terror of potential destruction, or the rush that comes from a total loss of control, then go car shopping with a four-year old boy. A boy who, at any moment, might drop his pants so that he can take a whiz on the tire of a brand new Lincoln Town Car— in public—in the showroom—in front of the entire sales force of The Central Florida Lincoln-Mercury dealership.


(We bought the Cougar station wagon. We did not get the special discount.)


Or you can attempt to convince Zoe that wearing a mob of monkeys hanging from every appendage just “isn’t done” in polite society, which is like trying to convince cannibals that boiled meat is not fine dining.

Linda (Monkey Tamer) Zern

One Man's Anomaly

One Man’s Anomaly

. . . is another man’s fatty deposit.

“I had to get patted down again because of my anomaly.”

It wasn’t a confession, exactly. It was more a baffled observation. My husband works in Detroit, Michigan (for now) and lives in the Orlando, Florida area. He spends a lot of time in airports, on airplanes, and getting himself through security lines run by the Transportation Security Administration.

“What anomaly? What are you talking about?”

“The anomaly in my pants.”

A thousand comments, comebacks, and one-liners rumbled through my head. God bless him, but sometimes my husband makes it tricky to express myself in a dignified sensible way, because there are straight lines and then there are Sherwood’s straight lines.

“Okay, let’s start with your pants. Were you wearing pants?”

He sighed.

“Don’t be goofy, of course I was wearing pants. But those full body scanners can see right through your pants—like superman.”

“Yikes.”

“Yep, and then the guy looking right through my pants radios the guy making me stand in the x-ray vision machine and says, ‘We’ve got an anomaly.’ That’s the word they use, an anomaly.”

He paused and then shuddered before continuing.

“And then they want to know what I have in my pocket. That’s how they say it, ‘What’s in your pocket?’”

I could feel the thinking wrinkles on my forehead deepen.

“In your pocket? But there’s nothing . . . oh, wait, I’m feel a theory formulating. Are you telling me that . . . no way!”

“Yes. The anomaly in my pocket is actually the fat tumor on my leg, and a strange man has to feel it, after they see it, every time I go through security.”

We were both quiet thinking about the ramifications of my husband having his fat tumor “outed” by the TSA.

“Maybe you can get a doctor’s note explaining your anomaly?” I said. “Or I can write you up a little something?”

So here it is; my husband’s anomaly note:

Dear TSA and Department of Homeland Security,

Please excuse my husband from being felt up by strange men every single week because of his anomaly. His anomaly is just fat. His doctor says its just “one of those things,” and he’s had this pocket or lump of fat for thirty years. It is benign. It poses no threat to national security. It is entirely a coincidence that the fat deposit appears to be living in the pocket of his pants.

Sincerely, His Wife

PS

I believe the fat deposit is the place where all the bacon my husband eats goes to die.

Sherwood and I believe it is important for Americans to know that our government is working hard keeping this country safe by having a federal employee feel up his fatty deposit every week. Rest easy. Sleep sound. Shop freely.

Another reason we made the decision to share our “story” with the world is so Americans with anomalies might know that they are not alone—when the TSA agent comes at them with rubber gloves and a crappy attitude.

Linda (That’s no anomaly; that’s my singularity!) Zern

There's Brave, and then there's Getting Flu Shots

There’s Brave, and then there’s Getting Flu Shots

“You have to come with me,” she said. The sound of crayons being digested slowly crackled in the background, and the smell of rubber nipples was almost tangible through the phone.

“Yeah, okay sure.” I made a wild guess and assumed my oldest daughter, Heather, needed me to go somewhere with her to do something. “Where, when, and why?”

“The Doctor’s. Monday. Because I took the kids with me to vote and people kept glaring at me and mumbling the word, ‘Babysitter,’ like a voodoo curse.”

“How’d the kids do?”

“Great, I threatened them with death and told them if they were loud they’d get thrown out. They wanted to know if we were going to the library.”

“Okay then, a trip to the doctor’s office on Monday, you and the gang.”

“And Mom, we’re all getting flu shots . . .”

Click.

By the time we barreled the double stroller past the elevators and into the doctor’s office, the only kid not suspicious was Zachary (aged three months.) Zachary was busy doing his baby lemur impression.

Conner (aged four) was the first to formulate a theory.

“I hate shots. I will try [cry.]”

Zoe (aged six) smelled a rat with a hypodermic. Zoe had dressed herself in an orange ball cap, rainbow knee socks, purple striped skirt and matching shirt, fuzzy boots, and green messenger bag. It’s hard to get one over on Zoe.

“Are we getting a shot today, Mom?”

Heather wrestled Kip (aged two) out of his clothes for his physical and said, “Yep!”

And the plotting began.

Conner talked me into taking him to the potty, which he claimed was not a potty and that he needed another potty, presumably by the elevators or Atlanta. I stood in the hallway arguing with a four-year old.

“Conner I’m pretty sure that is a potty; I recognize a toilet when I see one.”

Conner’s doctor walked by and said, “That’s the restroom, lady. Careful, you may have a runner; I predict he’s going for a high speed escape.”

“What’s escape mean?” Conner asked.

“It means to run away.”

“Let’s try that, YaYa.”

Zoe suggested we turn the lights out and stay really quiet. Conner crawled into the diaper bag compartment of the stroller and started to eat pretzels and babble. Zoe climbed under a chair and attached herself to it like a limpet. Kip spun himself in circles until he fell over. The baby drifted off to sleep in the middle of flu shot hysteria.

“See why you needed to come with us?”

Yep.

We talked Conner into being brave by telling him that Uncle Aric, who is a soldier, gets shots all the time. In fact, he’s had so many shots he’s going to be the only one in our family who survives the influenza zombie apocalypse. We did not tell Conner that bit.

Heather tried to pry Zoe free of the chair, but she’d already started to secrete a hard coral shell. I went in for the capture, but Zoe kicked me with her fuzzy boots and sent me rolling across the floor like a brittle marble. It took two large bodied nurses, one YaYa, and her mom to get her flu free. She screamed her head off and acted like an idiot.

Conner got to play computer games with Poppy for being brave.

When Zoe wanted to know why she didn’t get to go too, her mother said, “Because you screamed your head off, acted like an idiot, and you kicked people with your fuzzy boots.”

Zoe countered with, “I was screaming for my life.”

Man oh man, there’s a lot of that going around. I hope it’s not catching.

Linda (Flu Shot Approved) Zern