The Droopy Truth

My husband (Sherwood Kevin—and they called him Sherwood not Kevin) and I have racked up a fairly impressive list of most embarrassing moments over the past thirty-three years of marriage.

There was the time Sherwood ran out of gas in the drive-through of McDonald’s where he had to push the car up to the “pick-up” window. Then there was the knee surgery/Sodium Pentothal fiasco when Sherwood had a little trouble coming “out of it” and told the Nazis’ (i.e. nurses) in the recovery room that he had four wives and thirty-seven children and a really HUGE . . . um . . . REASON for all those wives. Talk about Big Love. Then there was the bubble gum on the hairy buttocks incident—also Sherwood.

He’s racked up a fairly impressive list of embarrassing moments. But remember I haven’t even begun to discuss the reams of charming, noxious, embarrassing moments involving various body fluids erupting in public places from our children during the “four kids, six and under” years.

The mistake is to assume that once the children are potty trained and the hubby’s knee rehab is over, that it’s finally over—the embarrassment of being alive and breathing various gases which produce—when mixed with, oh say—a Coney Island hotdog other chemical reactions. If anything, the relentless march of age just makes for a lot of fun opportunities to be total bags of gas and droopy body parts. Now, “most embarrassing” is almost a competition, and I’m thinking I’ve taken the lead.

From a recent phone call confessional:

“Boy, did I have an embarrassing moment today at work.”

Not shocked, I asked, “Now what?”

“Well, I got up from my desk to greet some co-workers, and when I stood up I just let fly with a giant . . .”

Cutting him off, I yelped, “What!?”

“You know.”

“No, what? You let fly with a groan, moan, sigh . . . what?” I paused and embraced the dawning truth. With slow drip horror, I said, “You. Did. Not!”

“Yep! Right there in my cubicle.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“Nope. But their faces said it all; it was so embarrassing.”

Silence descended over our conversation like a helium balloon filled with methane.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ve got you beat.”

“I don’t know; that was pretty embarrassing. I’d never met those people before.” Skepticism mixed with humiliation in his voice.

“I’m telling you; I’ve got you beat.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“You know how on Mondays I clean house in my big old sweatshirt, and I don’t wear . . . you know, anything . . .”

“Rubber gloves?”

“No! I don’t wear, you know . . . foundation.” (Foundation is a Southern word for bra. It’s a cultural thing.)

“And you’re not talking about makeup.”

“Right.”

“So, I had some stuff I needed to put in one of those plastic snap Rubbermaid totes, you know those plastic storage buck-ity things with the lids that I buy by the truckload from WalMart?”

“Yes.” It was a worried “yes.”

“Okay, so after I shoved the junk into the plastic thing and I went to snap the lid closed,” I said, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, “I snapped the end of my . . . self in the lid.”

Silence.

“You mean, the part not wearing foundation,” he said.

“Roger that,” I sighed. “But the worst part is that the plastic lid was closer to my waist than my chin when I snapped my . . . self into it.”

“Wow, bummer. Okay, you win. You now hold the most embarrassing moment prize.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Mother Nature.”

And so it droops; I mean goes, and so it goes. I’ve never been one to herald “the dignity of man” much, because I’ve never found any part of living to be very dignified. Mostly it’s just people pretending that nothing disgusting ever comes out of their noses or other orifices—ever. But it does, and we all know it. Not only does disgusting stuff come out of us all the time, sometimes it lingers in the air and wafts over into the cubicle next to you. So here’s hoping that this week finds you downwind and your droopy bits safe from snappy plastic lids.

Note:  If you find these references too obscure please email me, and I’ll be happy to tell you that Sherwood farted in front of some clients he had never met, and I snapped my nipple into a Rubbermaid storage container.

Linda (Flopsy) Zern

  

Defaced

One of my professors is trying to establish and encourage a charming collegiate tradition on my college campus. He wants folks to rub the head of the Benjamin Franklin statue when they walk, jog, saunter, scurry, or skulk by it.

I could not be more horrified.              

The bronze Benjamin Franklin statue sits on a park bench near Orlando Hall in a posture of casual relaxation.  He’s all sprawled out like my Uncle Morris lounging on the couch when his flatulence is kicking up; I said it was casual.

At the beginning of the semester, I wandered over to wish Old Ben a grand goodnight on my way to the parking garage when I realized that someone had defaced Benjamin Franklin’s crotch with what appeared to be a mixture of chocolate milkshake and shellac. Defaced? De-frocked? De-crotched?  (I’m an English major, and that’s why this last bit of wordplay is ironic.)

My first thought upon seeing Mr. Franklin’s crotch . . . coated with faux muck stuff was performance art or political statement?

My second thought was I’m frightened.

My primary physical reaction was to stumble backwards away from the defacement and yell, “Oh what in the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is that?” And then I scurried by, continuing on my way to the parking garage, in the foggy humid semi-tropical darkness—alone.  I tried not to speculate where a person would mix up a batch of chocolate-milk-shake-shellac-crotch-bomb: a lab, a dorm, a bathtub in a dorm, or that shaggy hedge next to the parking garage.

With all due respect to my professor, I’d like an alternative assignment.  I’d like to know if it would be okay if when I walk by the statue of Benjamin Franklin near Orlando Hall that I just rub my own head and maybe skip a jaunty step or two?

Linda (Statues are People Too) Zern

Stink Bug Acid Attack!

Emergency Meeting of the Zern Family Emergency Response Team -

Zern Family Emergency Response Team Mission Statement:  To form and coordinate a coherent, agile, and capable response to emergency situations up to and including, alien body snatching, wandering zombie hordes, mule invasions, water moose infestations, and exploding maggot migrations (anywhere, anytime, for any reason.)

Also, it would be nice if someone could find out why that kid is screaming her guts out!!

 

“Referring to Emergency Situation # 3127-12, StarDate – sometime just the other day,” I paused, referring to notes scrawled on my forearm.

“Would someone like to explain why, when there were children screaming bloody murder in the chicken coop on Sunday, no one got up out of their lawn chairs and physically moved to assess the threat level?” 

One team member pretended to sit up straighter and another practiced nodding, boney shoulder shrugging, out numbered faux nods—four to one.

“Okay, let me ask it this way.” I folded my lumpy finger bones in front of me, resting them on the picnic table.

“What exactly did you think was happening when you heard,” I glanced down and read the inside of my wrist,  “‘It sprayed Zoe in the eye. She’s blinded; she’s blinded!’ followed by horrified screaming and shrieking?”

My husband considered his official answer from behind closed eyelids.

“I thought that a chicken had pecked her,” he said, opening one eye.

“You heard, ‘It sprayed Zoe; she’s blinded’ and you thought, chicken pecking attack.”

“Or maybe a drive by chicken spitting. They spit you know?”

Several members of the team shifted uncomfortably in their lawn chairs.

“I told you that,” I reminded him. “I told you chickens spit.”

And I had told him about chicken spitting, a painful truth that I had learned while working at my first job. I was an egg picker at an egg farm. At least I hoped those chickens had been spitting at me.

“Okay Team, new rule. When you hear screaming, coupled with the words sprayed and blinded, feel free to assume STINK BUG ACID ATTACK. The proper response being visible physical MOVEMENT toward the actual screaming.”

Sherwood raised his hand.

“Was it necessary to blow Zoe’s eyes out with the garden hose?”

“Listen, Hero, is Zoe blind? Did stink bug acid scar her for life? Does she still smell like the butt-end of a stink bug?”

I handed out a fact sheet concerning the procedures to follow when a Tree Stink Bug shoots acid into your seven-year old granddaughter’s eyes. Step 1) Fire hose kid in face with water.

I concluded the meeting by informing the emergency response team that I was promoting Conner (age 5) to Captain Supreme.

At the time of the attack, Conner had calmly informed me, “I stomped that stupid stink bug to deff.”

“Excellent job, Conner; you’re the only one who knows how to stomp stuff. I’m making you the boss.”

As for the rest of them there’ll be a series of drills and training exercises this Saturday, and I’ll be selling the lawn furniture at a garage sale.

Linda (Stay Frosty) Zern

 

BUTTER: It's My Class Project

Linda L. Zern

Class Project Proposal /

Major English Writings I

October 2011

Children Sampling 300 Year Old Bog Butter in Ireland--For Fun?

Butter:  A Bigger Deal Than One Might Think

The Beginning:  “After the zombie apocalypse, when the Wal-Mart burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp, what food would you miss most?” This question is typical of the kind often posed at my house during Sunday family dinner. I looked at my five-year-old grandson, Conner, and he looked at me, and together we said, “Butter!” Since that moment I have been on a vision quest in search of a way to make butter using home grown sources in spite of zombies, cataclysm, and grid collapse.

The Search for Facts: Butter is easy; I have learned. Any nomad with an animal hide and time on their hands can jiggle enough raw milk (goat, sheep, cow) to produce a lumpy emulsification of fat. Animal skin bags on the back of a bouncy horse, barrels on a bumpy cart, churns with a dasher, and a jar with a marble can suffice.

The History: Without refrigeration, butter lasts longer than a glass of milk. Without refrigeration, cheese lasts longer than a glass of milk. Butter and cheese are tasty and a method of food preservation, more common in colder climates anciently than in southern climates. 

The Ultimate Goal: To be able to produce the raw materials on site (our six acres in Saint Cloud) to make our own butter because Conner and I will die without it.  I’ve settled on Nubian milk goats as a source for the raw milk (although cow’s milk has larger fat molecules and separates more easily than goat’s milk, cows are gi-normous and can tip over automobiles when annoyed. Goats are smaller, smarter, and rarely snap people’s spines.) I already grow the herbs (garlic, etc.) for flavoring. Note: Milking goats for butter and cheese is a twice a day, time consuming process that requires planning and forethought—a lot. I’m not there yet. 

The Class Project: A brief, hands-on (class involvement required) demonstration of butter churning (with baby food jars, a marble, and heavy cream,) clashing, and the sampling of homemade butters traditionally enjoyed in the days before the Kraft Corporation, while discussing the strange tale of butter as a tool of social and religious oppression.

The Crazy Truth About Butter in History: I have discovered that butter was one of the points of contention for Martin Luther in his break with the Catholic Church. Butter was produced and used extensively in the northern, colder climates (England, Scandinavia, Germany.) Oil was commonly used in the southern countries (Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain.) Rome and the Vatican (in warm sunny Italy) prohibited the use of butter during Lent. No worries. Businessmen and the church offered to sell oil to the north. No worries. The church offered a pay-for-play-scheme to allow the northern countries to use butter during lent if they paid a butter tax—nice fundraiser for the butter tower of Rouen.             

Weird Problems I’ve Encountered, And Of Which I Was Completely Ignorant: I wanted to bring in an example of “raw” or unprocessed milk to show the class how unprocessed milk naturally separates. Shock. It is illegal to sell raw milk in Florida. It is not illegal to drink it—just sell it. Anyone selling raw milk must mark it “for animal consumption only.” The government regulations have therefore driven raw milk sources underground and jacked the price of raw milk up to $15.00/gallon in Florida.  Whole Foods just pulled raw milk from its shelves. Like Lisa Ling, I’ll be forced to go undercover and underground to investigate the sordid underbelly of the black market of the organic/raw food movement. I’m actively seeking a raw milk pusher.

The Chemistry: Any number of factors can keep milk from becoming butter: too cold, too hot, too little fat, poor diet of the producing animal, too slow of churning, a curse, the witches next door.

Things I’ve Found Fascinating So Far: The amount of physical energy and know-how required in feeding a family in days gone by. How recently our modern conveniences were invented and how completely dependent the developed world is on them, and how much knowledge is always being lost and how quickly. Goat’s milk butter is harder to make than cow’s milk butter but better for you. Goats are browsers not grazers and will eat my weeds. How much of the world still lives like it’s the 13^th century (I learned this from my son, a combat soldier in the 101^st Airborne, who recently returned from a yearlong deployment on the Afghan/Pakistan boarder.) Goats and donkeys, that’s how the world still lives. And I find fascinating how many thousands of years worth of human beings managed to drink unregulated, un-FDA approved milk and still survived long enough to make babies.

PS   Can I dress up as a butter churning peasant woman in the middle ages, for my demonstration, in lieu of bringing a live goat to class? It would have been my neighbor’s goat; I don’t have goats yet. I do have an outfit. DON’T MAKE ME BRING IN 300 YEAR OLD BOG BUTTER!  (I’M KIDDING) IT’S ALL GONE. WE ATE IT.