Life Lived in Silhouette

Unjamming the Lawn Mower Blade - Again!

When they print the new owner’s manual for the John Deere Turbo Grass Master 6000 Series, I will be one of the silhouette people in it with a thick, black line slashed across my silhouette face. The caption will read: Danger, Warning, Caution! Stupidity Alert.

I will be the international symbol for people who ride over a pine tree root and get the lawn mower blade jammed so tightly into that massive hunk of root that seven strong men on steroids could not lift me off.

The black silhouette person with the black line through it will be a representation of me sitting next to my wedged, stalled, jammed, trapped, lawn mower. It will show me leaning against a forty-foot pine tree, my cell phone to my ear—crying, me not the cell phone. The caption will read: Don’t Let This Happen To Your Silhouette!

I called my husband in Virginia. We live in Florida. He travels. I like to think that it’s because he has to for work, or he’s a spy.

“Honey,” I wailed. “I’m stuck.”

“What? Where? How? Who is this?”

“I got the new lawn mower stuck inside a pine tree . . . and I can’t move it.”

There was a pause. It was one of his long, slow, deliberate pauses, which being interpreted means: Why did I marry this woman?

“Inside? What? Never mind. Well . . . put the mower in reverse.”

Sob. Gasp. Wail.  “I can’t. The mower blade is stuck INSIDE the pine tree root. I had bad luck. The mower took a bad hop and the root was hiding.”

“Stuck INSIDE the pine tree root! Bad hop!” Which being interpreted means: You crazy woman, you ran our brand new, four thousand dollar riding lawn mower into a TREE.

“Can you push it off the root?” Which being interpreted means: You crazy woman, what do you expect me to do her in Virginia where I must travel to earn money to pay for lawn mowers that you run into trees or roots?

I wailed, “I can’t lift the lawn mower. I’m too little.”

I sounded five years old. I felt four years old.

For the next two hours I cried while digging a trench around the trapped lawn mower. I cried while scooping dirt from around the point of direct pine tree root and blade contact. I cried while hack sawing through the pine tree root.

I cried because pine trees are so tall. I cried because pine tree roots are so thick. I cried because I’m not strong enough to lift a riding lawn mower. I cried because grass grows and needs mowing. I cried because all my children are grown now and aren’t around to mow the grass. I cried because time passes. I cried because I said a bad word. I cried because the Bald Eagle in our backyard was staring at me from another pine tree waiting for to die. I cried for the sadness of being alive. I cried and I cried and I cried.

And that’s how I knew I’m menopausal.

When my son-in-law showed up to push me off the root that I had already hack sawed into two big hunks, he said, “I can’t believe you used a hacksaw on wood.”

I said, “Huh.”

“You should only use hacksaws on metal.”

I snapped back, “Why, because we have so many metal tree roots in the world?”

And that smart aleck comment was how I knew I was feeling better.

What I learned that week was how it’s not the trees that are the problem. The trees you can see. It’s the roots. They lurk. You never know when you’re going to get totally jammed up because of them.

Linda (Hacksaw) Zern

Death by Owner's Manual

The Author Clearing a Rug Jam From the Blade of Her Lawn Tractor
( No One Was Maimed in the Taking of this Picture!)

Note: In honor of our upcoming anniversary, I will be re-posting a series of anniversary/celebratory gift related essays. I don’t ask for diamonds. I don’t covet dangling loops of gold for around my turkey skin neck. I don’t ask for spa days or massages. I ask for and get John Deere lawn tractors and accessories from my soul mate. It’s our way. It’s our culture. It’s how we say, “I love you.” He buys the Deere.  I mow stuff.

DANGER: ROTATING BLADES CUT OFF ARMS AND LEGS; WARNING: AVOID SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH; DANGER-CAUTION : POISON; DANGER: ROTATING BLADE – THROWN OBJECTS; DANGER: ROTATING BLADE; DEATH, DYING, DEAD!!!

This was on page one of my John Deere lawn tractor user manual.

This was on page one of my Valentine’s Day gift that I received from my sweetheart of thirty-two years.

My husband bought me a riding lawn mower, because nothing says romance like the smell of fresh cut grass, and the above warning was just the introduction of the owner’s manual. The next twenty pages explained the warning list in gruesome, gory detail—with pictures. Not real pictures of people poisoned because they drank riding lawn mower related fluids, but those black and white silhouette pictures that look like they were drawn by ancient (grass mowing) Egyptians in a real big hurry.

For twenty pages I was forced to look at silhouette people getting their silhouette toes, heels, arms, legs, heads, and fingers cut off. In addition to that there were tragic, gory silhouette drawings of stick people being crushed, maimed, poisoned, exploded, blinded, dragged, and burned to cinders by my Valentine’s Day gift.

There was even a silhouette picture of some anonymous soul slipping in a puddle of silhouette oil that might, maybe, could possibly leak out of the bottom of my new shiny lawn tractor. I don’t think the silhouette man made it.

All I was trying to figure out was how to start the stupid beast. By the time I found the information I needed, I was too afraid to turn the key.

I haven’t left the house since the John Deere man dropped off my John Deere lawn tractor with headlight action (for mowing in the dark—if you dare.) I want to call a lawyer and sue for pain and suffering caused by reading the owner’s manual, but I’m afraid if I pick up the phone my lawn tractor will have tapped into the main phone line to my house so that it can send a killing jolt of electricity into my inner ear wax. I’m afraid I’ll get ear tasered.

It’s out there, right now, in the garage leaking an enormous pool of deadly oil, hoping I will either lick it or slip in it.  I know it. I feel it. Its malevolence grows. It’s like having The Bride of Chucky parked next to the Nissan Titan.

And just this minute, I noticed that on the cover of the owner’s manual under the leaping deer silhouette logo are these words:  WARNING: THE ENGINE EXHAUST FROM THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS CHEMICALS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER, BIRTH DEFECTS OR OTHER REPRODUCTIVE HARM. (CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65 WARNING)

What if it gets me pregnant?

Well that cinches it, next Valentine’s Day I’m going to ask my husband for something really romantic—like a suicide bomber vest. Honestly.

Linda (Mow Fast, Mow Hard) Zern

  

  

Ease Dropping vs. Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping is rude. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. I like gardening, kickboxing, and eavesdropping.

I used to think that it was ease dropping. Like you got to sit around taking it easy and lean gently in the direction of the strange guys sitting at the food bar at the Target.  And when I say strange, I mean one of the guys resembled a poorly groomed bear and the other one, a taller version of a poorly groomed bear with a wolverine living on his face, but those guys never really said anything to overhear. They just stared a hole through me and growled under their breath.

Trying to overhear what those two guys were growling was not my finest eavesdropping moment.

At some point, I was informed that it’s really eavesdropping and not ease dropping; it’s eavesdropping like hanging from the eaves of a house like a mud dauber or a bat and listening in on other people’s conversations—ease, eaves, okay whatever. It’s fun.

I reassure myself that because I’m a writer and therefore an artist (pronounced ar’TEEST) it’s okay for me to hang from the eaves, mud dauber-like. It’s also okay for me to construct nests made out of mud and spit.  It’s not just okay for me to behave this way; it’s part of my job description. I am a serious observer of the human condition.

Note: Gossip is the wicked stepsister of eavesdropping, and I will probably burn in a fiery pit of bottomless spitty mud when I die, but man oh man, will I have some great stories to tell.

Until then, here’s a sample of a few gems that I’ve collected over the years while hanging upside down from the eaves.

“No, really it’s true. You can pull down six figures a year doing weaves,” a young man said.

“Wow, can you do a weave for me, right now?” the young woman asked.

“No, weave classes cost extra at beauty school and I haven’t enrolled yet.”

 (A conversation overheard of two recent public school graduates chatting about the potential earning power of the average hair weaver. They both had shiny, luxurious hair.)

“Lunatic scrap-bookers. Who knew?”  (A comment made by a traveler on an airplane after being knocked over by two excited, disembarking scrapbook conventioneers. The man was not harmed.) 

“When was the last time you saw survivors clinging to their seat cushions after a plane crash?”  (Sarcastic comment made after the requisite safety video on board a commercial airplane. Oh wait; I said that.)

“I’d like to get my husband involved [in scrapbooking], but his idea of being involved is getting his hands all over me.” (Overhead after a scrapbooking convention in Orlando, Florida)

“Mommy, are you still there?” The little girl asked from inside the bathroom stall.

 Holding the stall door closed for her daughter, her mom said, “Yes.”

“Will you be waiting for me?”

“Yes; why?” The mom asked sounding a little surprised by the question.

“Because I like it when you’re standing right next to me.”

(Conversation overheard in a bathroom between a little girl and her mommy. One of my favorites.)

Writing is a solitary activity. There’s only room for one person to type on my laptop at a time, but the collection of characters, words, thoughts, ideas, behaviors, descriptions, and responses that make up a story, blog, or poem is OUT THERE, sitting at the food bar at the local Target, growling, for no apparent reason. 

Linda Zern’s Writing Tip # 57:  Get out there and pick a good spot away from drain spouts and bug zappers. Hang quietly. Listen carefully. Bring a notebook. And hear the stories happening all around you.

Linda (Big Ears) Zern

The Neighbor Dog Blues

A pit bull puppy/dog loped around our yard wagging his tail, wee-weeing on blades of grass, and sniffing random butts.

“Oh great, someone’s dumped off another dog,” my husband said.

Note:  It’s a problem for folks “out in the country.” People figure that the kindly country folks will take in random kittens, cats, parrots, and pit bulls and let them live in their barns where the abandoned animals will write best selling books about their travails and adventures. Then these people (presumably) lie to their children claiming, “Hitler ran away.”

The suspect puppy/dog continued to frolic about. His enormous boy-dog parts bouncing wildly.

“Nope,” I said. “That’s the neighbor’s dog.” The young, happy-go-lucky puppy/dog sniffed my butt. “I don’t see this ending well.”

The pit bull squeezed under our fence into our neighbor’s pasture. A pasture stuffed with baby goats and baby sheep. Our horses stamped nervously. The duck peeked over the rim of his three hundred and fifty gallon water tank.

A week later in the dark of night, I came home from school and walked onto our back porch and gagged. The smell made me start speculating as only a writer can.

To no one in particular I huffed, “Good grief, someone’s been murdered on my back porch and everything that should be on the inside of a body is now on the outside of the body.”

I stepped lightly. I didn’t want to mess up the DNA evidence. Snapping the back porch lights on I realized we had been dog slimmed. Our neighbor’s happy-go-lucky puppy/dog had punched through the porch screen, jumped onto a private porch, and pooped once, twice, and then—for good measure—three times.  I lost count of the puddles of happy-go-lucky puppy/dog pee. There was a steaming pile of dog stuff on a couch pillow.

Our dogs stared at me from behind window glass. Ploodle, the Yorkshire terrier, rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“Oh man, this is not going to end well.”

While chatting with our neighbor about the neighborhood dog trouble, which was really not a dog issue but an owner issue, happy-go-lucky pit bull puppy/dog hopped into our duck pool and grabbed our duck by its skinny duck neck. His tail never stopped wagging—the dog’s tail not the duck’s. I screamed and ran for the phone and a leash.

The duck survived. The dog was arrested. And the dog’s owner spent the Fourth of July shooting his gun at . . . something. He practiced all day long.

“Do you think that guy knows I ratted out his dog?” I asked my husband. “How big do you think his gun is? Do you think he’s a better shot than me? How much do you think bulletproof vests are? Do you think a bulletproof vest would make me look fat? Should I invest in a Gatling gun for the roof of the house? How soon so you think you’ll remarry?”

I ran out of breath. He considered.

“He suspects. It’s a forty-five. Probably. They ain’t cheap. They make everyone look thick. No. I’ll probably bring a date to the funeral.”

“Smart guy, statistics show that the sooner a man remarries after becoming a widower indicates how happy he was in his marriage. You must be delirious with happiness.”

“You know it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t remarry. I’m just going to sit around and wait for someone to drop off a parrot or a monkey for companionship.”

He smiled. When night fell, our neighbor put his gun away and pulled out a grenade launcher. I started to stack sand bags around the duck pool.

Linda (Cop Out) Zern

    

    

For the Tinfoil Generation

My brother learned to cuss because of the invention of television. Not that people ON television cussed; they didn’t, because it was against the rules (standards of behavior that once upon a time were used to illustrate an ideal of human behavior.) It was people (moms and dads) who were WATCHING television who cussed, at the television, a lot.

My brother’s first complete sentence was, “Dodtamnson’ovenditch.” My brother was three. When the Sony (made in America) television started to roll or  “snow” my little brother knew to practice his cussing. Later, we knew to run for the tinfoil to wrap around the rabbit ears (an antennae system on top of the television resembling runaway coat hangers.)

If you had tinfoil you had power over your television. 

That’s how I grew up. Now when I wrap tinfoil around my computer cord I am mocked, ridiculed, and held in low esteem by my society. It makes me cuss.

For the tinfoil generation, I have compiled a list of discoveries I have made in the high definition/computer age.

1.     Tinfoil use will date you.

2.     Machines get to ask all the questions. When a computer, phone, or pad asks, “Do you want to proceed?” there will not be a “how bad will I regret this?” option.

3.     Machines don’t care how you are feeling.  Your chest pain and shortness of breath upon loosing two years worth of work on your great American novel will have no effect on your computer machine or your husband the computer analyst.

4.     User manuals for machine usage are written by geeks, for geeks, in geekage, under the influence of geek wranglers wearing their geekdom on their sleeve like tinfoil wrapped around rabbit ears.

5.     In the sixties, movies, books, short stories and Ray Bradbury predicted that the machines would take over the world and enslave mankind. We were warned.

6.      In 2011, the machines have won. I can prove it.

7.     The proof:  Just last Saturday, I watched small children wander aimlessly in diapers resembling venom sacks, while their parents stared helplessly into tiny machine screens playing “Angry Birds” or “Solitaire.” The children were chewing on rocks.

8.     I refuse to learn to text message until I evolve retractable spins on my fingertips so that I can tap on those tee tiny keys without pain or typo embarrassment.

9.     Tinfoil is still an amazing human invention, second only to duct tape, oh and the machines, of course.

There’s no conclusion. I don’t know what it all means. Or where we go from here. I only know where we were before, fiddling with rabbit ears, trying to get the screen to quit rolling, so we could watch popcorn make the tinfoil poof up like metal balloon or a Jiffy Pop pimple. Here’s to the Jiffy Pop generation.  What next?

Linda (Text-less) Zern