Amnesia Anyone?

I have a smallpox scar. I have a smallpox scar from having smallpox stuffed into me with a needle by the government. I was five when the government gave me smallpox. Okay, they gave me a teeny, tiny speck of smallpox, but the scar is still ugly.

Since then I’ve been inoculated, biopsied, C-sectioned, extracted, stapled, stitched, sliced and diced. And now I’m crazy. When I go to the doctor my CO2 levels go way up, because I hyperventilate, and when I go to the dentist my blood pressure sky rockets. Oddly enough, getting sharp objects jammed into body parts does not get easier with time.

Now, I have to be drugged out of my mind when I have to have sharp objects jammed into body parts.

I am a cancer-surviving pansy.

For my latest dental torture session on Thursday, my dentist and his gang gave me a sedative-hypnotic. It made me go to sleep for Thursday—the whole day—and I didn’t read the “medication guide” until AFTER the procedure.

 What a hoot. Those medicine-warning labels are the funniest reading on earth, in my opinion. Who writes those things?

Apparently, a side effect of taking a sedative-hypnotic can be something called “traveler’s amnesia.” This is side effect that can cause someone to be (and I quote) “NOT fully awake and do an activity that they will NOT remember doing. Reported activities include: driving a car (sleep driving), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, and sleep-walking.” Since Thursday has disappeared from my memory, I have developed a vague sense of unease about the “travel amnesia” possibilities.

What if, at some point during my Thursday—all day—nap, I put on a gypsy outfit, drove to the lakefront, and played a tambourine for loose change? What if I went horseback riding—naked? What if I drove my John Deere lawn tractor to the Florida Mall, so I could buy a pretzel, with salt? What if I killed somebody?

Traveler’s amnesia. Yikes.

What if I joined a motorcycle gang, got a tattoo of a giant butterfly on my right butt cheek, and promised to be a drug mule?

What if . . . oh . . .wait a minute . . . there’s something here under the bedcovers. Hey . . . what the . . . it’s a tambourine, and there’s a buck twenty-three in it.

I can’t seem to find the gypsy outfit.

So, was I naked while playing the tambourine? Amnesia is so annoying.

Linda (No More Cavities) Zern 

The Accident Monger

My husband hasn’t worn a wedding ring since the emergency room folks had to hacksaw it off. He was wrestling with some teenagers in a swimming pool. They broke his ring finger.

“You boys better settle down before someone gets hurt,” I remembered saying.

My husband hasn’t had the full use of his right knee since he hopped over a fence trying to help our neighbor catch his escaping bull.  His ACL detached, causing his leg to dangle loosely—my husband’s ACL, not the bull’s.

“Sherwood, maybe you should try opening the gate first?” I remembered yelling.

My husband ‘s knuckle is scarred where he rammed a loose prong of field fence into his hand. He was loading a roll of field fence onto our truck at Tractor Supply. When he showed me his gushing wound and asked me if he thought he should get stitches I said, “It has been my experience that when you can see the stuff that’s supposed to be on the inside of your skin from the outside, you’re going to need stitches.”

“Babe, you should probably put your work gloves on,” I remembered warning.

A couple weeks ago, my husband slunk out of our bedroom into the foggy morning to play racquetball with several younger, sprier men.

I said, “Don’t go. But if you go, don’t fling yourself around like a twenty year old. If you do fling yourself around like a twenty year old, make sure you have someone to drive you to the emergency room, because I’m not doing it. I have things to do today.” He scoffed at my scorn.

Later that day my husband came home from racquetball and worked on the duck pen, fed the animals, and mowed the front pasture—with a potentially BROKEN wrist. He refused to tell me he had fallen while flinging himself around like a twenty year old.

I trimmed the hedge and watched him mowing the pasture. He had to keep his left arm bent across his chest.  Every time he crossed in front of me he hit a bump, which caused him to double over the lawn mower steering wheel in agony; he continued to pretend his hand didn’t feel like it had been partially severed.

Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. Back and forth, he rode by, like one of those rabbits you shoot at in a shooting gallery. Back and forth, hit the bump and collapse. It was like watching the Shoot the Sherwood Off the Lawnmower Arcade Game.  At one point my vision blurred, and I thought if I had a gun I’d shoot him off that lawnmower.

Our son, Adam, drove my husband to the emergency room later that day. The bone was only  “compressed” not broken. He was supposed to wear a wrist brace for three weeks. He didn’t.

My husband is an accident monger. A monger is a person promoting something undesirable (hatemonger, warmonger, bad judgment monger.) On the other hand, I am a cynic monger or a prophetess.

Linda (Butterfly Bandage) Zern

Mow Hard, Mow Fast

I have bad rug mowing luck!

“Hi, my name is Linda.”

“Hi, Linda.”

“And I’m a, uh . . . an abuser.”

“Tell it to us, sister. Get it out!”

All Jammed Up!

I don’t abuse drugs, drink, porn, husband (much) or pre-natal vitamins. I abuse my lawnmower—not overtly. I mean I don’t pummel it with a tire iron or anything. I abuse our John Deere riding lawn tractor (because nothing runs like a deer) through my addictive, hateful indifference to it.

I’m so ashamed—also a little ticked off.

“This machine has been abused.” Those were the lawnmower fixer guy’s exact words, as he smeared grease around his hands with a green bandana. “We’ve got machines that are twenty years old that look better than your machine.”

Our lawnmower was three years old.

That’s the stinking excuse they used to reject our stinking extended warranty request to weld the stinking busted strut back to the part where all the whirly parts are; you know, the stinking whirly parts, the parts that do the actual cutting of grass.

My husband fixed an accusatory eye on me when he related the diagnosis—warranty, null and void—due to lawnmower abuse. Like all abusers, I attempted denial first.

“Sherwood, Babe, you know I always park that dumb lawnmower in the barn. It has never been outside when the tornados kick up.”

“Listen you! It’s not rain they’re talking about. It’s the stumps, tree roots, barbed wire, water faucets, welcome mats, hoses, bird carcasses, cement blocks, and three inch saplings that you’ve managed to run over.”

I tried anger next, of course.

“Well, anytime you want to climb aboard mister and mow in perfect, symmetrical rows exactly the width mentioned in the owner’s manual, you just get a running start and jump in the driver’s seat, because I don’t plan on slowing down long enough to switch out drivers; there’s a ton a grass out there.  And it’s growing, always growing, even when I’m sleeping—growing.” I stopped talking and tipped my head toward the grass. “Can’t you hear it? Growing. Pushing up, always up. Growing . . . up . . .”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, a little bit.

“Linda, you need help.”

“Darn right, I need help. I could use a full time lawn man guy. You know, driving Miss Linda.” I snapped this last bit out with more bravado than I felt.

“No, not that kind of help. I mean a support group, so you can work through some of this anger you have toward our lawn maintenance equipment,” he said.

I started to whine, which is the third phase in a lawnmower abuser’s cycle.

At that moment, the children filed into the room along with Cheryl and Mr. Medina, my neighbors, and the girl from the dry cleaners. I gasped. It was an intervention. I bowed my head and wept and not for the last time.

I liked to say that I have been clean and sober since the intervention, but not so much. Last weekend, due to bad luck and high weeds, I ran over the corner of a worn out rug I’d tossed on the family burn pile. The rug dissolved into a yarn rope, twisting around the lawnmower blade like a noose. The blade jammed. Grass cutting ceased. Cussing ensued. The cycle continued.

Linda (Blade Jammer) Zern