Knees Like Knuckles

By the year 2099 (if we survive 2012, 2013, and the year that asteroid comes back with Bruce Willis riding on it) the world will be covered with old people. Some will be older than others.

I am anticipating that oldness will be very hip in the coming years and some oldness hipper than others, depending on the condition of people’s knees—also hips, real or faux. My husband and I will be on the tail end of the baby booming retirement craze, having been born on the tail end of the baby boom.  Actually, we were born on the fizzle at the end of the baby boom, which means that our hips still work (last check) but our knees talk more than they used to. Okay, our knees don’t really “talk” they cuss, and in my husband’s case, they swear up a blue streak.

The following is actual pillow talk between two fifty-somethings contemplating the end of their functioning kneecaps, okay, it’s a conversation between me and my boyfriend of thirty-three years (Sherwood the Knuckle-Knee Zern):

“Sherwood, I’m giving you the two minute warning. Brace yourself; I’m going to roll over and give you a hug and a goodnight kiss.”

I heard him rearranging himself next to me, amid the sounds of his shoulder popping, his knee mourning the loss of its ACL, and his spine snapping shut.

I rolled toward him and puckered up; his shoulder popped like a breakfast circle made by elves.

He moaned and clutched his shoulder, which brought his knee in contact with a particularly rough fold of bed linen. He thrashed around on our pillow top mattress. I watched.

“Babe, have you been doing those exercises with that big rubber band thingy the doctor gave you.”

“Which one?” he gasped out.

“Hunh, which what? Which exercise, rubber band thingy, or body part? Is that what you mean?” He continued to thrash, concentrating on not answering me. “Okay, have you been doing your shoulder exercises with the blue rubber band thingy the doctor gave you?”

He paused in his thrashing.

“I always pack the rubber band thingy the doctor gives me when I travel.”   

 “You know, you have to actually do the exercises with the rubber band thingy to keep your body parts from falling off with old age and mildew.” I started in on my (the-couple-who-exercises-together-stays-out-of-the-orthopedic-surgeon’s-office-together) speech, finishing with, “How many of those exercise rubber bands from the doctor do you have anyway?”

He considered.

“I have enough of those exercise rubber bands that if I sewed them all together I’d have a hell of a slingshot.”

“A slingshot might be a good thing to have when the zombie apocalypse gets here, ‘cuz you sure aren’t going to be outrunning those zombies anymore,” I said and gave him a goodnight kiss.  “And what’s with the cussing? You never cuss.”

“That wasn’t me; that was my knee back talking.”

I got up to take some Advil PM for the burning in my lumpy finger bones—also known as arthritis, which in my case is caused by meanness—also mildew.  Bring on the zombie baby booming apocalypse.

Linda (Got Fit Hips?) Zern

Pooping in Your Pants Never was Happiness

Potty training is a real **pisser.

Just ask Sadie, my three-year old granddaughter, who at any given moment breaks into hysterical weeping when she has a potty training malfunction or thinks that she MIGHT have had a potty training malfunction or SUSPECTS that she might have a potty training malfunction sometime in the future—near or far.

Just ask Kipling, my three-year grandson, who breaks into hysterical weeping when someone mentions to him that it might be time to change his diaper, a diaper hanging approximately to his ankles and filled with “the usual” byproducts—also an action figure or two and random chunks of cement. We have a fun family nickname for a diaper that has seen dryer better days; we call it the venom sack.

Just ask Sherwood, my husband, who is sensitive (apparently) to something used at restaurants to create meals—like food, and who loves to regale the family at Sunday dinner with the tale of his famous potty malfunction in a public bathroom. In the lobby! Of a Marrott! At a sink! Don’t ask! Note: For the full story you have to come to Sunday dinner. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you’ll be required to change Kip’s diaper.

Just ask Heather, Kip’s mother, who has Irritable Bowl Syndrome and a Gastroenterologist. Heather says that when she goes to the doctor, it’s a waiting room full of eighty year olds and her, but it’s worth it to get the good pills. Heather’s doctor says that IBS is often caused by internalized stress, probably from trying to potty train a kid with random chunks of cement in his disposable pants.

Actually, several members of my family seem to have trouble with their gastroenterology and it’s not just the toddlers, which makes family outings exciting. Receptacles that members of my family have considered using as an emergency potty include: trashcans, hastily dug holes, a hedge on the National Mall in DC when the public bathroom was closed for cleaning, and my handbag.

And that’s why I don’t believe in “the dignity of man,” because there’s no such beast and even if there were such a beast as a dignified man, he’d still have to poop somewhere. Trust me on this.

Linda (Regular Jane) Zern

**Pisser – a crude ancient Greek word meaning a pain in the diaper.

       

College Age: Education that is Higher

I go to night school. I go to night school to pursue higher education, which is education that is higher or taller than lower, shorter education. You can tell if education is higher because the people are taller—also sleepier. Presently, I am studying Major English Writings I.  These are major writings like Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, but they are not in English. Another way to tell if higher education is higher than lower education is that the class titles will be wildly misleading.

In lower, shorter education there are classes called “Reading Time” where you sit in a circle and read stuff. In higher, taller education there are classes where you sit in a circle and you read stuff, but the stuff you are reading will be incomprehensible. The stuff you read in the taller education will make you long for a Star Trek Universal Language Translator or the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, because at least the Swedish Chef makes you laugh.

After you have read the incomprehensible stuff that sounds like the Swedish Chef making meatballs, you will be asked to write stuff about the stuff you have read. There are a few rules:

1)    Incomprehensibility will be punished.

2)    Wild theories, outlandish speculation, and big words are rewarded.

3)    Whatever you write, there can always be more or less of it.

4)    Nothing means what you think—a flea is never a flea.

I was excited to see that we would be reading a poem about a flea in major English writings. I thought, I can always use a few good tips about flea control and outbreak prevention here on the farm. Alas (that’s a word I learned in higher, taller education) alas, I had not embraced rule number four, see above. I was not alone.

At the big circle table where we sit, the student on my right shifted in her seat.

“I’m going to say that the flea is a fetus,” she said.

Another skill I have acquired in higher education is the ability to speak out of the side of my mouth, under my breath, so that my identity is concealed in a group setting.

“I like it. Flea starts with F, fetus starts with F. The teacher will love it.”

My friend was encouraged.

The girl on my left leaned over and in a conspiratorial tone whispered, “I don’t think you can go wrong if you mention the word ‘penis.’ I think the flea is a penis.”

“Nice.” I reassured her.

“How about the flea being the embodiment of the church’s inability to establish a system of semi-institutional ways to castrate the male dominated society’s need to express its infantile sexuality, or the flea is a pregnant alien with a penis.”

I’m not sure I actually heard this or just hallucinated it.

Somebody asked, “Linda, what’cha got?”

“Fleas suck?” No one laughed. “Nothing. I got nothing.”

My problem is that I’m a writer. I write about fleas and peas and creaky knees, and I have a hard time not thinking like a writer or about the writer. My sympathy is with the guy who wrote about the fleas and what he was thinking about when he wrote The Flea and whether or not he’d been having a hard pest control week, or if the flea situation at his house was just totally whacked out . . . and brother, I feel you. I really do.

Here’s to higher education that is taller and smarter and deeper—don’t forget deeper.

Linda (Smarty Pants) Zern